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miatech
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ESX 3.5 and ntfs drive.

guys, I just installed 3.5 on my server "former win 2003" so the storage is about 1T on an ntfs partiton, but ESX did not recognise the partion; I'm using fstab for that with same result. "does not recognise ntfs." Is there any way around this all the data is in this drive, and is imperative that I make it work with my virtual machine, but virtual machine will not see it because the host server itself does not recognise it. I have thought of copying the data off of it and reformat the drive and put the data back. But that's lots of work, and I'm talking about 500G of data. Besides, I want to leave it as ntfs, as both windows and Linux can see this parition.

any help appreciated

blog: pctechtips.org

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AndreTheGiant
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If you use ESX 4.x the name under /vmfs/devices/disks/ is different.

Check the right name.

Also if you have ESX 3.x be sure that the name is correct (use tab to expand the device name).

Andre

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro

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AndreTheGiant
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Just to be sure to understand...

You want to read an existing partition of a previus OS installed on the same hardware of ESX?

In this case you have to use RDM of local disk, but it cannot be done from the GUI.

See:

http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/virtualization-pro/vmware-esx-storage-how-to-get-local-sto...

Andre

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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miatech
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well, this is a disk by itself, no OS ever installed there, just as storage. But it was created using a win 2003 box. But after that I made it work with Centos, and it worked just fine. I just want to made all that data available to the vm's.

thanks

blog: http://pctechtips.org

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AndreTheGiant
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Is still a "local" disk... follow the hint to create a RDM for local disk.

You have to attach this RDM disk to a Windows VM, so you can see the disk from there.

Andre

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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miatech
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what about for linux vm's?

thanks

blog: http://pctechtips.org

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AndreTheGiant
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The same also for Linux.

The idea is that you need to read the disk from a OS that can mount and read a NTFS partition.

Andre

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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miatech
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I'm unable to use the commands, I don't know whether I'm doing wrong or just simply won't work. Here's the output of my system

#esxcfg-vmhbadevs

vmhba0:0:0 /dev/sdb

vmhba32:0:0 /dev/sda

vmkfstools -i Linux-Server.vmdk -d raw:/vmfs/devices/disks/vmhba32:0:0 Linux-Server_1.vmdk

Destination disk format: raw disk out of '/vmfs/devices/disks/vmhba32:0:0'

Cloning disk 'Linux-Server.vmdk'...

Failed to clone disk : The system cannot find the file specified (25).

thanks

blog: http://pctechtips.org

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miatech
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the two drives are connected to a SATA RAID controller... don't know if that could be the problem

thanks

blog:[pctechtips.org|http://pctechtips.org]

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AndreTheGiant
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If you use ESX 4.x the name under /vmfs/devices/disks/ is different.

Check the right name.

Also if you have ESX 3.x be sure that the name is correct (use tab to expand the device name).

Andre

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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miatech
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yes, thanks I have found it. But after adding the disk to a win 2003 server box, I keep getting blue screen, and the machine keeps on rebooting in an endless loop.

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