cannot map raw drive using vmware-rawdiskCreator

[1TallTXn]

Followed the instructions for mapping a raw drive found elsewhere on this forum, I get hung up on creating the virtual drive from the physical partition.

The command I entered is as follows:

"/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/vmware-rawdiskCreator" create /dev/disk3 1 "/Virtual Machines/BCVM_DISK2/disk2" lsilogic

(have also tried ide and buslogic in place of lsilogic with the same results)

and the error returned is this:

Unable to copy the source files to the destination files.

The partition contains a functional Windows XP installation

The drive this parition lives on also has another NTFS partition containing non-system files.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[WoodyZ]

Well I can tell your trying to follow one of my posts on vmware-rawdiskCreator Probably this one:

What type of Mac?

Is this drive internal or external and if external FireWire or USB?

What it the output of the vmware-rawdiskCreator command using the print argument as shown in the linked argument?

[1TallTXn]

Yup, thats the thread. Plus a few other tidbits I've gathered in my searches, though I doubt I could pull those threads back up.

Its a 24" iMac 3.06Ghz < 6mo old running 10.5.6.

External drive is USB.

I don't have access to the machine right now so I can't get you a screenshot of the output. The print argument listed that drive with 2 partitions. 1 being the partition I need to boot the virtual machine from at ~75gb and the other, partition 5, being the file storage drive. Both are NTFS format.

[WoodyZ]

Okay, a few points...

External FireWire Drives tend to be more successful being used for Raw Disks then USB. So depending on Make/Model you may not have any luck trying to use USB. I'm pretty sure that less the Boot Camp partition, which I try not use use in Fusion due to the BSD Name change issue, whenever I do Raw Disk Access its with FireWire because USB typically doesn't work. Also I only do it when necessary and do not depend on it, again due to the fact that Fusion doesn't properly handle the BSD Name changing between reboots when it does change. So unfortunately it's a broken feature and should probably only be used if necessary and when you have no other options.

You need to use ide not buslogic or lsilogic since the external hard drive probably isn't a SCSI Drive, is it?

The Fully Qualified Pathname of the must already exist. The last segment of the line is the name of the virtual disk that is going to be created in a folder of the name o preceding that. So in my example in that thread and because I do not use the defaults and I place my Virtual Machines in a folder in the root of the drive named Virtual Machines so using the example from the linked thread

"/Virtual Machines/BCVM_DISK2/disk2" ide

"BCVM_DISK2" is a folder in "Virtual Machines" the is in the root of the drive and disk2 becomes the name of the virtual hard drive. The ide argument in this case is used because th target was not a SCSI Hard Drive.

[1TallTXn]

The USB enclosure was purchased separate from the drive as the drive came from a prior machine that the BIOS flaked on. The drive is most likely IDE. Possibly SATA, but for sure not SCSI.

I will see about putting the drive in a FW enclosure and see if it'll work then.

The only file in Virtual Machines/ is another virtual machine. Its does not have an OS on that VM yet. Is it possible to edit the .vmx file on that VM?

[WoodyZ]

The USB enclosure was purchased separate from the drive as the drive came from a prior machine that the BIOS flaked on. The drive is most likely IDE. Possibly SATA, but for sure not SCSI.

EIDE/PATA/SATA all use ide as the last argument in that command line.

I will see about putting the drive in a FW enclosure and see if it'll work then.

If the USB one that you have does not work FireWire is the way to go. I have a few different brands but the PHR line from macally.com have worked well for me.

The only file in Virtual Machines/ is another virtual machine. Its does not have an OS on that VM yet. Is it possible to edit the .vmx file on that VM?

You can add a Raw Disk Virtual Disk to any Virtual Machine you want providing it appropriate to do so.

[damoclesdam]

For me, this turned out to be as simple as access permissions creating the file.  I already had .vmdk file of the same name.  Type of disk (ide, usb, firewire etc) made no difference.  HTH