How to use raw disk with vmware player 5.0?

[RockThisParty]

Hi!

I have nealy none experience with vmware, so perhaps it's a really stupid question, but I've been searching and trying now for some hours und didn't reach anything ...

On my system I have

1) "Win 7 old" partition on a harddisk

2) "Win 7 SSD" partion on a SSD

They are configured as dual boot with windows 7 boot manager.

Just für convenience during migration to the "new" system, I'd like to boot "Win 7 old" as a VM-guest in "Win 7 SSD" as a host.

I found "use a physical partion as a raw disk", but wizard for new vm in the player doesn't give me the option to use a raw disk neither to "add an addional disk" in hardware settings.

Is ist no a feature of "vmware player"? Do I need "workstation"?

Any other advice?

Thanks a lot in advance

RockThisParty

[milton123]

Click the "Power Off" button on the VMware virtual machine's toolbar.

• Click the "VM" menu at the top of the virtual machine window and click "Settings."

• Click "Add."

• Click "Hard Disk" in the "Hardware Type" window and click "Next."

• Click "Use a Physical Disk (For Advanced Users)" and click "Next."

• Click the "Device" box and click the physical drive's name in the list.

• Click "Use Entire Drive" and click "Next."

• Click "Finish."

• Start the VMware virtual machine by double-clicking it in the VMware window.

Try this steps. May help....

Cheers, Udin

[continuum]

In addition to what Milton already mentioned ....

Using physical disks on Win7 hosts can be a pain ... so if you run into problems ....

- start VMplayer as admin in an elevated context

- set the SSD "offline" in diskmanagement
- avoid using the option "partitionedDevice"

- in worst case disable UAC

[RockThisParty]

Hi!

Thanks a lot!

I think I have been blind, really didn't see "add hard disk" before.

Perhaps I'm now at the point of pain 😞

- When I mark "use entire disk", I get the message "The physical disk is already in use. Cannot open C:\Users\...\Windows 7 x64 Raw-3.vdmk or one of the snapshot disks it depends on".

- When I only use the necessary partition (drive 1/partition0), I get "Operation System not found".

How can I mark that partition for boot?

Thanks a lot,

RockThisParty

[continuum]

attach the vmx-file and the vmdk please

... stupid question ...
are you aware that you may need to reactivate Windows 7 every time you switch between using it natively and inside a VM ?
are you aware ethat on first boot you will get a Bluescreen with a chance of 95 % and that you have to manually adjust the registry to get past that bluescreen ?

[RockThisParty]

Hi!

"x64" is the version with "use whole disk"

"x64" is the version with Drive1/Partition0

thanks a lot!

[RockThisParty]

- Activation would be ok. I won't change it often.

- Bluescreen 😞  ... I wanted to save some time in migration to the new "fresh" windows and get some experience with vmware ... perhaps it would be better, to use converter with the old win7 an forget the physical disk?

[continuum]

> perhaps it would be better, to use converter with the old win7 an forget the physical disk?

that is definetely the easier option

both vmx-files are ok - though not ideal.
If you add the physical disk as scsi0:0 fixing the driver-issue will be a lot easier.

I see no reason why you received an error using those vmx-file - other than maybe trying to run both at the same time ?

[RockThisParty]

ok, thanks a lot.

If it doesn't take too much time, it would be nice, if you could have a look at the vmx/vdmk-files nevertheless.

Thanks!

2012/10/9 Ulli Hankeln <communities-emailer@vmware.com<mailto:communities-emailer@vmware.com>>

VMware Communities<http://communities.vmware.com/index.jspa>

How to use raw disk with vmware player 5.0?

reply from Ulli Hankeln<http://communities.vmware.com/people/continuum> in VMware Player - View the full discussion<http://communities.vmware.com/message/2127916#2127916

[continuum]

I had already looked at those files - they look ok - if you want to know why they failed upload the vmware.logs

[RockThisParty]

Hi!

Just to close this discussion:

- Converter worked fine.

- I had to fix some strange things in my boot config and finally got physical disc booting also and received blue screen as predicted.

Thanks for any helping!

Yours RockThisParty

[timeOday]

I had a similar problem and thought I would post a workaround / solution:

Situation:

I have Windows installed to partition 1, and Linux to partition 2.  I want to be able to live boot to either, or run either in a VM from the other (although have only tried running Linux under Windows host).

With VMWare workstation 7, I could "use physical disk" (the whole thing, /dev/sda under linux).  But with workstation 9, I got the "physical disk already in use" error.  But I wanted to upgrade because WS7 cannot boot new kernels (3.x) on Ivy Bridge due to some new security mode.

Solution:

Here's what works: I use a physical disk for /dev/sda2 (the linux partition) only.  This prevents "physical disk already in use", but no longer boots.  And grub doesn't want to be installed on a partition.  So I made a new virtual disk of minimum size and assigned it also to the VM, and installed grub on it (using a rescue disk).  Then I changed the boot order in the VMWare bios of the VM to boot from the second (virtual) disk.

[timeOday]

In followup to the previous, I did get Windows 7 installed on the first partition of the physical disk to boot as a VMWare guest from Linux installed on the second partition.

Adding the entire physical disk to the Windws 7 guest VM did not work; it seems that this causes it to appear as an IDE drive to the Windows7 guest, which doesn't work.  Whereas if you add just the single partition of the physical disk, it appears as SCSI and can work, once you edit the registry in the guest Windows install, setting ControlSet001\services\LSI_SAS "Start" to REG_DWORD 0 (as documented elsewhere on the web)  to prevent Windows BSOD 7B.  (I loaded an old XP VM and added the physical Windows 7 partition to it so I could use regedit under XP to make the change).

But using just the windows physical partition in the VM means you can't use the boot loader on the physical disk.  So I ended up creating a minimal debian install on a virtual disk, then adding the Win7 physical partition to that VM.  The debian installer noticed the Win 7 install and can "multi-boot" to it.  In effect I have a 400 MB boot sector (the debian install that exists only for grub), but oh well.

Now I can boot my laptop natively to either Windows 7 or Linux, and also load the other as a VM guest.