Vmware Workstation failure to mount 10tb physical disk

[longlostbro]

Does vmware workstation or any other vmware product support physical disks larger than 2tb?

I am trying to connect a raid 5 enclosure of 10tb and mount it to my vmware workstation ubuntu machine. The current error I am getting is when mounting the drive in ubuntu and I am thinking it might have something to do with the filesize.
I am running vmware workstation 12 in windows 10.
The disk is set to offline in windows and I am running WS as an administrator.

Error	VMDK CONTENTS	Diskpart Info
The operation on file "\\.\PhysicalDrive1" failed. If the file resides on a remote file system, make sure that the network connection and the server where this disk resides are functioning properly. If the file resides on removable media, reattach the media. Select Retry to attempt the operation again. Select Cancel to end this session. Select Continue to forward the error to the guest operating system. I/O error, dev sdb, sector 11721553632 I/O error, dev sdb, sector 11721552128 I/O Error Detected. Shutting down filesystem Please unmount the filesystem and rectify the problem(s) metadata I/O error: block 0x2baa8b100 ("xlog_bwrite") error 5 numblks 8200 can't read superblock	# Disk DescriptorFile version=1 encoding="windows-1252" CID=6f4a8bb1 parentCID=ffffffff isNativeSnapshot="no" createType="fullDevice" # Extent description RW 23441768448 FLAT "\\.\PhysicalDrive1" 0 partitionUUID \\?\scsi#disk&ven_h#w&prod_raid5#5&19bb575e&0&010000#{53f56307-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b} # The Disk Data Base #DDB ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic" ddb.geometry.biosCylinders = "1024" ddb.geometry.biosHeads = "255" ddb.geometry.biosSectors = "63" ddb.geometry.cylinders = "16383" ddb.geometry.heads = "16" ddb.geometry.sectors = "63" ddb.longContentID = "55c8f3052c372c02465d66656f4a8bb1" ddb.uuid = "60 00 C2 97 8a 7c c2 cb-9a 27 51 78 58 3f a7 e6" ddb.virtualHWVersion = "12"	H/W RAID5 Disk ID: 00000000 Type   : SATA Status : Offline (Policy) Path   : 1 Target : 0 LUN ID : 0 Location Path : PCIROOT(0)#PCI(1C07)#PCI(0000)#ATA(C01T00L00) Current Read-only State : No Read-only  : No Boot Disk  : No Pagefile Disk  : No Hibernation File Disk  : No Crashdump Disk  : No Clustered Disk  : No

[continuum · Accepted solution]

The official version says that WS only allows virtual disks up to 8 TB.

According to my own tests, this limits only the size of vmdks for the "New-VM" wizard.
Once you have a larger vmdk - just tried a 10TB vmdk - WS will not complain about the size.
I dont expect that WS will prevent physical disks to be used inside a VM that is already configured.
So in your case I rather guess that you have started WS with a normal user account.
Try to start WS as administrator - maybe even by using the admin account.
I would expect that then it will work.
Unfortunately the error messages produced by vmware.exe are not really precise - so there is no way to say if you really have a bad super block.
To test if that really is the problem and not just a poor error message - try to mount the disk directly.
Please post the vmdk - want to know if there is something unusual about 5.5 tb into the disk.

[longlostbro]

I am running WS as an administrator, and I successfully add the physical disk to the vm, but when mounting the device in linux it gives the previously posted error. The vmdk was created by going to the vm settings and adding a hard disk, then choosing the physical disk and setting it to use the entire disk. In hyper-v this process is painless and produces no problems, but in WS I can't seem to get it to mount. Attached is the vmdk

[continuum]

I assume that this is common knowledge - but maybe you dont know: before you start a VM with a vmdk type "fullDevice" or "partitionedDevice" using Windows Vista or later as the host you must set the disk to status "offline" in diskmanagement.
Some users also had to disable UAC.

[longlostbro]

The device is in 'offline' status in the Disk Management control but I have not tried disabling UAC. I will give that a try.

[longlostbro]

UAC is disabled and I still have the same problem.

[continuum]

Just for your info
new possible workaround for rawdisk access under Windows 7

I would like to see a vmware.log - maybe this can give us a hint.

[longlostbro]

This didn't solve my problem. I eventually gave up, but this has solved others problems in the past and helped me a lot so I have marked it as the answer.