Fusion 8, DiskWarrior 5, and OS X Sierra VM...can I rebuild this VMs directory with DiskWarrior?

[ZapNZs]

I have a Sierra VM on my El Capitan host, running Fusion 8.5.2. This VM has a directory problem, and, as you likely know, the golden standard here is DiskWarrior, which repairs even the most severe of directory problems when nothing else can. I have DiskWarrior 5 (the latest version which allows you to create bootable flash drives) and would like to run it on this VM. I called VMWare and was told this simply is not possible, and was advised to create another VM. Before doing that, I wanted to ask for any other suggestions. I've read in older threads containing some accounts of people using DW 4.x with older versions of Fusion in several different ways (for example, creating a secondary bootable vdmk.)

Does anyone know of a solution where I can run DW on this VM to rebuild the directory?

Thanks!

[ZapNZs]

It's also worth noting that when I say you can create a bootable flash drive, it makes a flash drive bootable, clones the Recovery HD onto the flash drive, copies several other system files, and then installs DiskWarrior. This allows you to access the boot manager at startup, select the DW option, and it boots into the same screen that would be seen with the Recovery HD found on the local SSD, except there is one additional option to select DW. As you can also access Disk Utility from this menu, if your drive is encrypted, you can open Disk Utility, select the main volume, and select 'unlock', and enter the password so you don't have to decrypt the entire drive simply to run DW. This version also plays nice with SIP, so that will not be an issue.

So there are no functional issues with Sierra itself...rather it is the logistics of integrating DW with the VM, given you need to run DW on a volume other than the one you are rebuilding.

[ColoradoMarmot]

For what it's worth, in 12 years, supporting thousands of Mac's, I've never once run DiskWarrior.  If you have corruption that isn't repairable by booting in single user mode and running fsck- fy, it's almost always a hardware failure.

You could try creating a new VM, then attaching the VMDK to the other one to the first, and just run disk warrior from the new VM against the disk of the old one.