vm and external drive

[vmnew]

Is it possible to install vmware fusion on an external drive? I just got an Macbook Pro 2.6ghz for Christmas, 200gb hard drive but want to leave it for Mac stuff. I tried to install linux directly on a 500gb maxtor drive but couldn't get that to work after trying multiple distribution and every single bit of advise I could find online, so want to try to install vm on external hard drive and install linux in vm. Hard drive can work off of either firewire or usb 2.0.

[admin · Accepted solution]

Fuson itself must be located on the boot drive for security reasons, but you can store virtual machines on external drives. During the Name stage of creating a new VM, change the Where field to point at your external drive. If you've already created a VM, you can just copy/move it over to the external drive.

[vmnew]

Will Fusion recognize firewire or should I use usb or does it matter? I'll try this tonight. Thank you.

[admin]

If you're just storing the virtual machine on the disk, it doesn't matter whether you use Firewire or USB since OS X is the one talking to the disk.

Fusion (and to the best of my knowledge, all existing virtualization products) does not support Firewire in the guest, so you can't connect the drive to the guest, but it doesn't sound like that's what you're trying to do.

[chidmf]

OK, how about this - if the virtual machine is on an external firewire disk, any chance it would also recognize files previously saved on that firewire disk? (I've been running bootcamp to run some equipment and saving its data files to an external firewire pocketdrive - would like to migrate to VMware without moving things around too much).

[admin]

You'll need to set up a shared folder or network share if you want the guest to see files on the firewire drive - there's nothing special about being on the same physical partition as a virtual disk that would allow a guest to see these files.

[mobiletaylor]

Just cheking to make sure I understand.  I can create VM on my mac and then copy that to an external (deleting it off my mac).  Then point vmware to it on the external and it will run?

Thanks,

JT

[admin]

If by "on your Mac" you mean on the Mac's internal drive, there's no need for the extra step. When you create a virtual machine file you'll get a standard file save panel; pick a destination on the external drive.