VHDX files no longer work

[AngryJedi]

Hi Guys,

Scouring around the forums, I've noticed that VMWare Workstation at some point did support using the VHDX format for hard drives (good to share content between VMWare and Hyper-V machines).

It seems now however in VMWare Workstation 16 (16.2.2), this no longer works.  The minute you add a VHDX file as a hard drive and try to start it up, it fails with a "Cannot open the disk for writing...Module 'Disk' power on failed".

If I use a VHD format disk instead, that works as expected, however that format is very outdated and not supported on Hyper-V Generation 2 (if you want to share disk content).

How can I get VHDX to work as it once did?

[AngryJedi]

Does anyone have any word on this? Is this a broken feature or a use-case that is not supported any longer?

It would be nice to be able to mount vhdx files and use them as drives within Workstation without having to convert them for compatibility with other VMs.

[RDPetruska]

Try reverting to version 16.1.2.  All of the 4 16.2.x versions I've tried so far have broken disk mounting.

[AngryJedi]

So it does sound like it's a bug then that needs to be addressed.  Hopefully someone from VMWare development is actually reading this to fix it.

I can't revert back because the older versions have other VPN related issues that got fixed in the newer versions of VMWare Workstation.  So I'll just have to wait for a fix.

I'm just trying to bring this up to VMWare's attention so that they are aware and can make a fix for it.

[Jimadilo]

I ended up having to mount the VHDXs for a VM directly through windows, via the Mount context menu option in Windows Explorer. I then added them as physical devices to the VM.

I'll admit that I had never had the need to do this until very recently. However, being able to add the VHDX files to the VM directly would be very preferable, as I now have to mount the files when I want to use the VM. I could write a powershell script to start this VM, but all extra work for something that I'd assumed (and apparently does usually) come for free.

If anyone from VMWare is reading this, could tell us that this is a deprecated feature, as then we'd know if any workarounds should become permanent arrangements.