topic Re: How can I take a old hard drive, unknown O/S and preview in Vmworkstati in VMware Workstation Pro Discussions

How can I take a old hard drive, unknown O/S and preview in Vmworkstation

hmorchano — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 15:36:39 GMT

I have this hard drive which was given to us to preview in Vmware. One of the attorneys were told that a virtual machine can be created using the information from the hard drive. I was told building this was simple. This drive has been in storage for at least 8 years. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Re: How can I take a old hard drive, unknown O/S and preview in Vmworkstati

telfred — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 15:53:36 GMT

First comment has the hard drive been attached to a physical computer ?

Having been attached to the physical computer does the hard drive work ?

If these steps haven't happened you can forget whatever anybody wanted you to do with it.

It is possible to use VMWare Converter however it does not work over the network at the moment so there would need to be a number of Gb free on a local hard disk.

PS VMWare Converter has its own forum, where the users will be able to help you far more than in the VM Workstation forum.

Re: How can I take a old hard drive, unknown O/S and preview in Vmworkstation

KYordy — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 16:31:17 GMT

I have done similar by, first, connecting the HD to a PC and verifying that it is OK. If it is DOS, it will just boot up. you may not even need a virtual machine. If not DOS, then Telfred's response is the way to go. Just connect the HD to a PC as a secondary and run Converter. You should be good to go.

Good Luck!