Using portable external drive with VMWare Fusion

[edna-b]

In searching I've seen several posts on this subject but haven't found a definitive answer yet: I'm running VMware Fusion 1.1.3 on a MBA with OS 10.5.3. I have a WD2500 Passport USB external drive that the VM does not recognize - although it recognizes my WD MyBook. What do I need to do to get the VM to see the Passport? The VM is taking up 27.8 GB of space on my MBA drive - I'd like to at least archive some of the larger files to the external drive - unless it's the VM itself that's taking up all that room. I don't want to run it off the external drive - that's bound to be slow - but what can I do to conserve precious MBA drive space? THANKS

[bradley4681]

is the passport partitioned the same or formatted the same as the MyBook?

Cheers,

Bradley Sessions

If you found this or other information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful".

[edna-b]

Not sure - I'm on the road & don't have the MyBook with me. Can you give me an idea what you're thinking I'd need to do with the Passport?

[bradley4681]

well if it sees one and not the other i would think its a disk formating issue, as in its not formatted with something it could see.

Cheers,

Bradley Sessions

If you found this or other information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful".

[Technogeezer · Accepted solution]

Well, there is no "definitive" way to do it, because there is more than one way to do it.

A Windows formatted USB drive should be able to be read/written within the VM. Just connect the drive to the VM via Fusion's menus and it should work. If it doesn't then there's some detective work to do.

First, is the WD Passport disk visible to the Mac OS? How is the disk formatted? FAT32, NTFS or Mac OS Extended? If it's formatted as Mac OS Extended, than you can't connect the drive to a Windows guest directly. Out-of-the-box, Windows won't read a Mac OS formatted disk. Either re-format the drive or use one of the other methods : (both of these assume that you can use the drive on Mac OS).

Don't be so quick to dismiss running the VM off the external drive. It's may be as fast or faster than the MBA hard drive, and the lack of contention with the files that the Mac OS uses may actually allow the VM to run better.

You may also want to create a second virtual hard disk for your VM, and place the file(s) representing the virtual disk on the Passport external drive - again assuming that the drive is visible to the Mac OS.

Another option is to use VMware's Shared Folders function, and point a shared folder to the Passport drive. There have been reports of the shared folder functions not being terribly stable, so I wouldn't use it.

Tha last option I can think of is to configure Mac OS to share (via Windows sharing) a folder on the Passport drive, and then access that network share from your VM. I'd personally try the other things first.

[edna-b]

Thanks, I appreciate your guidance. Based on your reply and the previous, it seems formatting is likely the problem. The Passport disk can be read by the Mac OS.

I'm interested in the option of running the VM off the external drive; to do that, would I simply shut down the VM, close Fusion and copy the VM folder to the external drive? Or is there more to it than that?

I'd consider the second disk drive option too - I'd appreciate a little more detail on that also, if possible.

Again, thanks for your help

[WoodyZ]

I'm interested in the option of running the VM off the external drive; to do that, would I simply shut down the VM, close Fusion and copy the VM folder to the external drive? Or is there more to it than that?

As far as copying it yes that's about it however it will not appear in the Virtual Machine Library window until you drag & drop it there or run it from the new location or use the File > Open... command. Also when you do run it click the I Moved It button to retain then MAC Address to avoid triggering Windows Activation if applicable.