Connect a HDD with NTFS directly to virtual system without format (ESXi 5.0)

[Pedy]

Hi, I am student pretty new with ESXi and all, so this may be a pretty stupid question. I installed ESXi 5.0 without any problems and converted my old win server 2008 without problem to it. That windows worked also as datastore and had pretty much full 1 TB HDD connected to itself. Now I would like to know how this HDD with NTFS connect directly to that virtual machine. I can see the disk in devices, but I couldnt figure out how to connect it to that machine. I wanted to make it datastore or something like that, but making it datastore is not possible without formating the disk.

I would appreciate any suggestion. Thanks

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Community,

although not supported (I assume the system is a Whitebox anyway) you could try to attach the disk as a RDM to the VM. For how this can be done, take a look at http://www.vm-help.com/esx40i/SATA_RDMs.php

André

[Pedy]

Yeah, its a whiteox just for my testing and learning. Thanks for answer.