Accepted Solutions
Yes you can, but you have to keep your virtual drives in the same folder... So for example:
put your C-drive in folder c:\Virtual Machines\WinXP\
and the D-drive in folder d:\WinXP-Data\
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Wil
Hi,
YES, you can use any filesystem you like in your guest, that's no problem.
However there is one note. When you create your Virtual Machine and the disk, make sure you create it as 2GB split (growable) disks.
The reason for this is that your virtual disks are being created as a "single file" container normally. FAT32 however has a 4GB disk FILE size limit, so in order to work around that problem, you create your disk in split files of 2GB in size. For example a 10GB virtual disk will end up as 5 x 2GB files.
There are more advantage of using this type of disk. One of them is that you can easily shrink your disk (remove excess zero's / deleted files) as you only need 2GB free in size and not the full 10GB. ANother advantage of growable files is that the disk can be 10GB in size as the guest sees it, but only use 3GB in actual disk space on the host. Finally using this format it is the most portable, so you can move it around to any USB disk - even formatted as FAT32 - and copy your virtual machines.
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Wil
edit: fixed the typo with DISK vs FILE size limit.
Oops,, I forgot.. when there's advantages there is almost always disadvantages as well...
#. growable vs. preallocated disk. A preallocated disk has less chance of getting defragmented as it doesn't grow while it is being used, so doesn't need to reallocate space for it while running.
#. 2GB split disk vs 1 big file. 1 file is easier to manage, although that usually is not an issue as your VM is a "bundle of files". Another disadvantage is a slight performance hit (unnoticable if you ask me) as your host now has to open more files in order to manage a virtual disk.
Please note that you don't have a choice on a FAT32 disk in regards with using split disks or not. If you don't use a 2GB split disk, then you might end up with data corruption.
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Wil
well thanks for the prompt reply. as you tell that
"However there is one note. When you create your Virtual Machine and the disk, make sure you create it as 2GB split (growable) disks"
It is not clear (a bit technical for me)
Suppose i have 20 GB Hard Disk with two partitions C 12GB and D 8 GB with FAT 32 volume. Windows 2000 Take 3 GB space and rest is free 10 GB is free in C drive so how can i make 2GB split(growable disks?
You wrote that
"FAT32 however has a 4GB disk size limit, so in order to work around that problem, you create your disk in split files of 2GB in size. For example a 10GB virtual disk will end up as 5 x 2GB files."
In my opinion FAT 32 can support upto 32 GB for a single partition here you tell that FAT 32 has 4 GB size limit.
I know i am going to wronge way ,it is not a discussion of Partion size using FDISK 
but the thing 4GB limit size is not clear.Please enlight on it.
"#growable vs. preallocated disk."
Here preallocated disk means the partion size which we had made suppose 12 GB in run time it can not be change but growable can we vary in size? is it currect
Thanks in advance again
mypass
"However there is one note. When you create your Virtual Machine and the disk, make sure you create it as 2GB split (growable) disks"
It is not clear (a bit technical for me)
I'm sorry, it is a bit hard to see the technical level from someone's question (that's positive for you!)
In order for VMware to support large virtual disks on file systems like FAT that do not support really large files, they cheat by splitting the really large file up in chunks. When VMware opens such a disk it automatically opens ALL of the chunks and make it look like if it is one large file. If you are familiar with Zip files spread over multiple floppy disks (from the good old days)... that's the same idea.
Suppose i have 20 GB Hard Disk with two partitions C 12GB and D 8 GB with FAT 32 volume. Windows 2000 Take 3 GB space and rest is free 10 GB is free in C drive so how can i make 2GB split(growable disks?
It is an option you have when creating the virtual disk
You wrote that
"FAT32 however has a 4GB disk size limit, so in order to work around that problem, you create your disk in split files of 2GB in size. For example a 10GB virtual disk will end up as 5 x 2GB files."
In my opinion FAT 32 can support upto 32 GB for a single partition here you tell that FAT 32 has 4 GB size limit.
My Bad, it is a 4GB FILE size limit, not disk size limit. So you cannot save files larger as 4 GB, there's no problem having a FAT32 partitions of several hundreds of gigabytes.
"#growable vs. preallocated disk."
Here preallocated disk means the partion size which we had made suppose 12 GB in run time it can not be change but growable can we vary in size? is it currect
No this means that the disk only uses as much space on your host as it actually has in use. So if you install Windows XP in your guest in a 20GB virtual disk and you are only using 6 GB on the virtual disk then as a result your virtual disk will only take up 6GB at your host. If you create a preallocated disk then it would take up the full 20GB no matter how much data you are actually using in your guest.
Hope this helps,
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Wil
Hi,
The last thing i want to ask which is not a part of the disscussion that how you make the questions in a box which seams a prety clears :smileygrin: .I just bold my question but your style seams very nice .Please guiude me how can i do that so it should be clear to others as u did.
I reply using the plain text tab and use the "quote" button from the toolbar.
This uses a quick text formatting technology called wiki. Here's a document I wrote on that:
As for the whole disks questions, Ulli has a few good pages on his web site that discuss all of the differences, but it is a bit technical.
http://sanbarrow.com/vmdk/monlithicversussplit.html
and
http://sanbarrow.com/vmdk/disktypes.html
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Wil
Yes you can, but you have to keep your virtual drives in the same folder... So for example:
put your C-drive in folder c:\Virtual Machines\WinXP\
and the D-drive in folder d:\WinXP-Data\
--
Wil
good reply :smileygrin: About Split file which has its size 2GB ,if the file size grow up to 2 GB then in that case what VMware should do? Like windows XP take 1.5 GB space and afer installing the softwares the size will be increase definately .It will make a new chunk of 2 GB again and so on...
Not sure what you are asking, so I will try to answer both cases that I see..
If a file in your guest is like 3GB then it could be spread over 2 chunks, so 2GB in the first chunk and 1 GB in the other chunk.
Now as we are talking windows and its habit to fragment, this is not likely to end up in just 2 chunks, but more likely in 6 chunks LOL which brings me to the other thing you could mean with this question. What if you delete this 3GB file in your guest, will it give back the space to the host OS? No it won't do that... however.. there is an option in workstation which is called shrink (available under VMware tools in your guest task bar) and that will clean up the excess space and make room on the host.
This is also why you would want split disks as you only need to have 2GB disk space free at the host for this to work.
With a monolithic disk (excuse my french) you would need the entire disk size free... so shrinking a 20GB disk in a single file would require 20 GB free space.. whereas with the split disks.. its 2GB at all times even if your virtual disk is 20GB in size.
2- I have 1 GHz processor can i take the option for the guest os for virtual Processor (Two processors) or it work on Hyper Threading Tech / Intel Dual core?
You can give the virtual machine more as just one processor, but unless your software is going to use it, it is more likely to slow you down as help you speeding up things. Also remember that your host needs a processor.
Dual core helps whereas hyperthreading is debatable.
3-If the RAM is 512 MB then can i increase the size for the new virtual machine.I know in that case it will make HD as swap so it is possible.Suppose windows xp take 256 RM ram for good performance then VM ware will also take some ram also may be 50 MB or above and the houst OS also.What is your opinion.Should i remain it as default or should increase phycical ram .
You should never overcommit memory as it will make things slow as a molas. I'm not even sure if this is possible on VMware workstation.. under VMware ESX you can do this, but in that case it will take memory from other VMs.. as to not having to swap.
Swapping kills performance.
Your host always needs memory for the host OS to run, if it starts to swap out the host OS kernel you will end up with something completely unworkable.
4-If i have a IDE HD for host computer .Can i collect SCSI HD for my Virtual Machine or batter to choose IDE also?
You can select SCSI harddisks, they are the most performant and most portable, so they are easier to import the VM to VMware ESX for example. An IDE virtual disk isn't supported on ESX. Beware though that Windows XP has no LSI scsi logic drivers by itself. There's a floppy with SCSI Buslogic drivers available from the workstation download page.
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Wil
Two things more i want to ask
Creating a super thread eh? 
I am using DSL with static IP and i want to run four virtual machines on my host machines which one network connection is batter.
a-Bridge
b-NAT
Please guide me that in which situation i shall use bridge and NAT network connections?
Only with the bridge option your VM will come in the same address pool as your host. However, you probably only get one IP from your ISP.
I am assuming that you are not connecting your machine to the internet directly aka that you have some firewall NAT device between you and the internet that is handing out IP addresses?
If so, you could use IP forwarding on there and set it up as bridge on your host. I'm afraid this is a whole topic on it own as it depends a bit on your setup.
2-I/O Adoptor Type
What is
Bus Logic and LSI Logic?
In the virtual hardware you have the option to select either for IDE disks or SCSI disks.
Bus Logic and LSI logic are simply brand names of scsi hardware that has been implemented as a virtual device.
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Wil