Adding a Hard drive to a guest OS

[citrusfizz]

Delema:

I need to add a rather big hard drive into our esx machine thats formated for NTFS, and have the drive accessable from a guest OS of server 2k3. (working on a limited budget here) its 1.5TB and is about 80% full.

basically i need to know whether or not its possible to add this drive without formating it and make it accessable by the guest OS

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the forums - ESX/ESXi can not read an NTFS volume directly - the first question I have is this large volume on a SAN or locally attached storage? If it is SAN based you can use an RDM and have the access the data directly = if it is not SAN based you have one of two methods have the exisitng windows server present it as an NAS/NFS device to you ESX host which the ESX/ESXi host will be able to access or share to the VM directly as a CIFS share - or is all else use converter and bring it into a VMDK file -

If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful

[citrusfizz]

its just a normal sata hard drive internal

but its possible to convert it with out loosing any data? or do i need a second hard drive to do that?

[weinstein5]

Do you already have your ESX host set up? If you do then no you do not need to add another drive - converter which will run on another box will read form the Windows server and create a VM on the ESX Server -

If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful

[citrusfizz]

let me be more specific

i have an esx server up and running.. all i need to do is put the drive in there and (hopefully) have a guest OS see the drive and access it..

sounds like this one work tho. your method may work.. however it seems that you need 2 hard drives of greater or equal size to "convert" it over.

i however only have one large drive.. and it is full of data formatted for ntfs.

[weinstein5 · Accepted solution]

I understand now - you will not be able to take the drive out and add to your ESX server and be able to access the NTFS datastore and yes using converter will require a datastore with the 1.5 TB of necessary for the new virtual disk -

If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful

[atbnet]

You could create a new virtual disk for your VM and then copy the data off the other disk over the network from a live cd or with the disk in another PC.

But putting the NTFS formatted drive in ESX and thing the VM will be able to see it and use it is not going to happen.

In addition sata is not really that well supported currently in ESX.

Andy, VMware Certified Professional / VMware vExpert Award 2009

Help, Guides and How Tos

If you found this information useful please award points using the buttons at the top of the page accordingly.