VMware install on USB external Hard drive

[menneke]

I'm looking at installing VMware on a USB Hard Drive? Can it be done and if so can you image your Virtual machine according to a preset gost CD, mirroring a default machine for teaching purposes?

[rbromfield]

You can install it on an usb drive but you can't use it on another system. Since it makes registry changes.

[kingneutron]

You might want to use Vmware Player for this.

Download Player and move it to the USB drive

Copy virtual machine to the USB drive and run it from there

Only downside is you'll have to install Player on every host machine that doesn't already have it. You may also have to edit the .vmx file for the virtual machine to tell it where to find disk files.

[KYordy]

It would be cool if somebody could make/modify a VM player/workstation compatible executable that would run self-contained from a USB like the Portable Apps project applications.

Just a wish...

[RDPetruska]

Keith, check out Ulli's MOA2 project... latest incarnation is working quite well. http://www.sanbarrow.com/moa21/moa21.html

[KYordy]

Will do. Thanks!

[continuum]

Hi Keith

do not expect to much : that MOA-stuff can run from USB-stick or USB-disk but you will always have to boot it ...

On the other hand - latest version performs quite well when booted from USB.

An early adopter uses it to run a 384 MB XP-VM on a 512MB host booted into MOA from USB-stick. He says performance is on level with a regular install ...

Ulli

[KYordy]

Thanks for all the info! I plan to play all this coming weekend!

[menneke]

If I do what you just said, I have a standard CD setup (gost) that we used to image laptops for classes. The CD contains all standard files, programs and student files to teach topics.

Can we then re-gost a Virtual machines or how should do this in order to run my virtual machine with the standard image CD?