VMWare questions

Published on September 22, 2007 By Gideon MacLeish In Personal Computing

As I have mentioned several times previously, I will be purchasing a laptop that I will be using to run virtual machines. I am planning to use VMWare server to run these apps.

On another machine, I have attemped unsucessfully to install Windows 95/98 (don't ask!). I am not sure but I believe the problems are related to the file format (FAT/FAT32 vs. NTFS). Assuming this is the case (please correct me if it is not), I would like to find the answers to the following:

Do I need to create a partition on the hard drive formatted for the 95/98 installs, or can I "create" the partition inside the virtual machine without affecting the rest of the hard drive? If I have to create a separate partition, can I run those virtual machines off of a flash drive, as it is already formatted properly? I won't be using the 95/98 virtual machines much, so if it would be possible to run them off of a flash drive, that would work for me (it would work quite WELL, actually).

I'm hoping someone has the experience to have the answers to this one.

Comments

Leauki

on Sep 22, 2007

VMWare uses disk image files. A disk image file represents a hard disk to the virtual machine. You can partition it (using fdisk or whatever running in a VM) as you will.

Note that the hard disks and partitions VMWare sees have NOTHING to do with the physical hard disks. They are disk image files. You can tell a VM in its configuration which files to use as what hard disk. But when you create a new VM, VMWare would usually create a disk image file and assign it as first hard disk for the VM automatically.

Gideon MacLeish

on Sep 22, 2007

That's what I was thinking, Andrew, but I didn't want to muck things up.

Now, even knowing that, just for "fun 'n games" purposes, can you run VMWare off of a flash drive?

Nakor

on Sep 22, 2007

The .vmdk files that make up the disk images should have no trouble being on flash drives. I use mine off USB hard drives on a daily basis.

I am not using a flash drive for them because I make use of the "snapshots" feature of VMWare workstation to keep various machine states ready for testing. That winds up adding another 1GB or so per XP snapshot based on the amount of allocated ram to the image and differentials to the disk images.

Leauki

on Sep 22, 2007

Yes, you can run a virtual machine on a flash drive. (Not VMWare, i.e. the program that runs/monitors the virtual machines but the virtual machines.)

Many people copy virtual machine disk images from one host system to another. In fact, VMWare's server editions do that automatically while a VM is running when necessary.

Leauki

on Sep 22, 2007

Phoon

on Sep 22, 2007

Here's another tip which I use.
I create a "Master" or "Source" machine for each OS that I will use. VMWare will clone a virtual machine quite niceley.
For example: I create a WinXP VM and name it XPSource. After I get the system fully updated I will run sysprep on it. When the VM shuts off, I then create a snapshot of it at that point. I NEVER fire up that VM from there using VMWares clone feature. Don't know if VMWare server has that function though.
I then clone it to another machine. This process has saved me quite a bit of time.

Dr Guy

on Sep 24, 2007

Now, even knowing that, just for "fun 'n games" purposes, can you run VMWare off of a flash drive?

SHould be able to, but I have not tried it. After all, it is just an application on the computer, not the computer's actual OS itself.

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