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ahmd9
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

How to move a VM from one disc to another on the same PC?

I'm running VMware Workstation 9 with multiple VMs on one hard drive disc. Unfortunately I was bad at predicting how large those VMs would grow, so that now they take up almost 100% of space on the physical HDD.

So I'm curious, is there a way to move one or more VMs from one HDD to another (say, from 😧 to E:) on the same physical computer? And if yes, what are the steps?

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WoodyZ
Immortal
Immortal

mfelker
Expert
Expert

This is what I would do (it is very easy).

1)  Make a folder on the new disk call it D:\vmware say.  Drag and drop the entire directory of the source VM (it will appear at the bottom of the GUI under Virtual Machine Details)  to the new vmware folder.

You will have (I use Fedora as an example) a new  structure like D:\vmware\Fedora\<Fedora files>. 

2)  Open VMware WS - remove the old Fedora VM from the library (favorites) - you need not delete from disk as you've already done that . 

3)  Now use the VMware File--.Open to and open D;\vmware\Fedora\Fedora.vmx.  The "new" Fedora will be identical in every way to the one on the full disk (won't be so full now!).  If you get a message saying did you copy or move the VM naturally you will say "move" as that's what you did!.  Repeat the process for any other VMs you have on the  old (full) disk.

4)   If you want to store all new VM's you create on the 😧 Drive go to Edit--Preferences and change the location of stored VMs to D:\vmware.

Of course you should change the drive letter and new directory to your taste.

Done

ahmd9
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thank you, both. I was able to move some "stand-alone" VMs, but about the ones that are linked to, or are linking clones?

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WoodyZ
Immortal
Immortal

If you start a Linked Clone VM in which the Parent VM has been relocated then you'll get a dialog/message box that says...

     File not found: vmname.vmx

     This file is required to power on this virtual machine. If this file was moved, specify the new location.

Where "vmname.vmx" is the fully qualified pathname of the target .vmx configuration file of the Parent VM of the Linked Clone.

This dialog/message box has two buttons, one being Browse... and the other Cancel.  You'd click the Browse... button and navigate to where the Parent VM has been relocated and select the target .vmx configuration file.

VMware Workstation should then update the parentHint in the Disk DescriptorFile of the Child Disk and it should then run normally from there on.

If for some reason VMware Workstation cannot rectify in this manner then one might have to manually edit the parentHint in the Disk DescriptorFile of the Child Disk however unless it comes to that then don't worry about it.

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11Al
Contributor
Contributor

I normally move/copy  the VM folder where I want (other partitions, external HD etc.) as stand alone and it works perfectly. I think that clone stand alone (no linked) is the same thing.

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