Booting Vista off External USB using Physical Disk

[digmys]

Hi guys, im new to VMWare and hope some of you can help me out.

I recently purchased a new harddrive for my laptop and installed XP on it in an attempt to speed things up a little because my old vista install was moving slow. So I removed my old vista harddrive and put it in a USB enclosure and tried to boot from it normally.....well no dice, starts to boot and then BSOD. Read around a little and saw that MS blocks you from booting Vista from USB. So then I figured i would try VMWare because I thought that it would emulate the USB drive to be SCSI and vista would boot fine. So I made a new virtual machine and set it to use the entire physical disk as the main harddrive and tried to boot, well turns out im getting the same error. Somehow vista still knows it is a USB drive.

Is there anyway of fooling vista into thinking that this drive is a physical drive and let me boot my Vista install back up in VMWare?

Thanks very much for the help guys!

[digmys]

any ideas?

[digmys]

Has no one ever tried this before?

[continuum]

It can be done - though it doesn't make much sense ... anyway - you need LSI-logic scsi-drivers to boot the Vista from USB-disk. You need to check if the vmdk references "lsilogic".

You also need to check if the vmx uses a LSI-controller. Once you have done that - run a repair-install or install from scratch

___________________________________

description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

[digmys]

Im new to vmware, could you help me with those steps. Also why would you say it doesn't make much sense?

Thanks very much for your help, i need to get this working ASAP.

[digmys]

Alright the vdmk does reference lsilogic and I am quite sure I picked the LSI Controller when I made the VM. So a repair install using the vista disk should get it to boot?

[continuum]

Maybe yes - it really doesn't make much sense - you would be much better off using a regular vmdk and store it on the USB-disk - then u can use snapshots and suspend and ....

The result will behave the same

___________________________________

description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

[digmys]

But then I cant hotswap the HDD into my laptop and boot the installation natively, which is very important to me, as hotswapping a HDD is nearly as easy plugging in USB on my laptop, but I would sometimes like to run vista inside of XP for small tasks. Thanks for your help, I will try a repair install as soon as I find my disk.

[continuum]

Forget this : But then I cant hotswap the HDD into my laptop and boot the installation natively,

Vista has no hardware-profiles and you can't use it as a VM in change with a native boot.

___________________________________

description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

[digmys]

Well the repair didnt work. Vista still knows it is an external drive. Either I am doing something wrong or VMware doesnt offer TRUE emulation for drives, which is very dissapointing. Anyone with any other ideas or know if Parallels or VirtualPC offer true emulation?

[continuum]

> Vista still knows it is an external drive.

Nope - it thinks it uses LSI-logic-scsi-controller but does NOT have the right driver.

___________________________________

description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

[digmys]

I can boot inux, using another exernal drive, in the same VM, but not vista, that means the drivers are right, right?

[continuum]

That means Linux has appropriate drivers for that VM - Vista does not have those

___________________________________

description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

[digmys]

How can I get the drivers and install them on vista? Thanks again for all of your help.

[continuum]

I would do a fresh install - you will not get good portabilty with Vista - get used to that idea.

___________________________________

description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD: