Mount Physical SSD on Both Host OS and VMWare

[WraphOdesa]

Hello,

Hope everyone had a pleasent holday. Please pardon the newbie question but...

In virtualbox I was able to mount one of my local hard drives to access it directly from my VM. I was also able to access it from my primary operating system. This made transferring files very easy without the need for setting up shared drives \ folders.

I recently started testing VMPlayer free version. I am able to mount the same drive to be accessible to my VM but I cant access it simultaneously like I could with virtualbox (I have to shutdown the VM and it becomes unlocked). Is this a limitation of the free version or is it just not possible with VMPlayer.

Thank you 

-Wraph

[scott28tt]

@WraphOdesa 

Moderator: Moved to Workstation Player Discussions - nothing to do with vSphere.

[wila]

Hi,

I don't know your virtualbox feature as I do not use virtualbox (have any links?)

VMware Player has a shared folder feature for exactly this kind of functionality. You do need to have vmware tools installed in the guest operating system to be able to use that feature. Note that you do not need to have a network connection for using this shared folder feature, so it is not sharing as in "network share".

You cannot mount one disks from two operating systems at the same time, if you could then it would cause disk corruption as both host as well as guest operating system would be writing to crucial parts on the filesystem simultaneously.
This is only possible with a cluster friendly filesystem.

--
Wil

[RaSystemlord · Accepted solution]

I haven't really had any need for that nor use the shared folders. You can use copy/paste between host/client (both ways) or drag/drop (which somehow doesn't work all the time and dropping may not be as precise as selecting explicitly "paste").

This method works well with GB-class files between host/client and I use it all the time. With Ubuntu, it is even better because VMware isn't locked while you do it - in Windows, you need to wait for the first part of the process to finish. (First part is copying to temp and the second part is moving to the folder that you selected. Temp doesn't get cleaned automatically in Windows and thus you may need to clean it manually from time to time to free disk space ... if you copy GBs as I do from time to time).

[WraphOdesa]

Looks like I was making a mountain out of a molehill. In virtualbox you are able to copy and paste only text, no files so I didn't even consider it for VMWare... I just tested it and it does exactly what I need it to do. Thank you!

[WraphOdesa]

Regarding mounting a hard drive to VirtualBox:

https://operating-systems.wonderhowto.com/how-to/share-local-drives-and-folders-using-oracle-vm-virt...

I needed to do this in virtualbox as you cannot directly copy and paste files from the host OS to the guest VM (you can do text). I have since learned that I can do this in VMWare so I don't really need this feature anymore. 

Thank you for your follow-up. 

-Raf

[wila]

Hi Raf,

Ah thanks for that.

That's pretty much the same thing as the shared folder feature in VMware. AFAIK you can share a disk as well using the shared folder feature, at least I remember doing exactly that in the past.

PS: I had to pull your reply out of spam, seems our new forum anti spam feature is a bit over active.

--
Wil