VMware Fusion to run Windows installed on external drive?

[DukeofAnkh]

Hello all,

I was hoping to get the drive out of my old laptop and connect it to my MBP. What would be really cool is if I could get VMware Fusion running that install of windows as a virtual machine in a similar way that it runs my bootcamp partition. Does anyone know if this is possible? I only have the 30 day trial of Fusion, but if this works, I will be buying.

Failing the above, would it be possible to boot my MBP from the external drive? Or would that be too slow to work?

Thanks in advance for your help

 

[dbam987]

You might be able to convert your existing drive to a virtual machine by using VMWare Converter. Its a free download available straight off of VMWare's website. Unfortunately its available only on Windows for now, but you might be able to use it to create the virtual machine, then transfer the virtual-disk files it creates to the Mac, and finally use Fusion to load Windows.

 

[DukeofAnkh]

You might be able to convert your existing drive to a virtual machine by using VMWare Converter. Its a free download available straight off of VMWare's website. Unfortunately its available only on Windows for now, but you might be able to use it to create the virtual machine, then transfer the virtual-disk files it creates to the Mac, and finally use Fusion to load Windows.

Thanks for the pointer. That actually seems like it'd be a better solution than what I was going for

 

[fusionrocks]

Thanks for the pointer. That actually seems like it'd be a better solution than what I was going for

If your PC is still operational, you can use VMware Converter to just make a virtual copy of it, and push it onto an external USB hard drive (or even to a Mac doing Windows file sharing).

You can get the free software here: http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

And there's a tutorial here: http://mylearn.vmware.com/register.cfm?course=10311

Also, Fusion has their own user forums that are great for technical questions here: www.vmware.com/go/fusionforums

Hope that helps!

~VMware Fusion Team

 

[DukeofAnkh]

If your PC is still operational, you can use VMware Converter to just make a virtual copy of it, and push it onto an external USB hard drive (or even to a Mac doing Windows file sharing).

You can get the free software here: http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

And there's a tutorial here: http://mylearn.vmware.com/register.cfm?course=10311

Also, Fusion has their own user forums that are great for technical questions here: www.vmware.com/go/fusionforums

Hope that helps!

~VMware Fusion Team

Thanks for your help but it doesn't look like it's going to work. I tried to do what you're suggesting but in VMware converter I get this error message: "Failed to take snapshot of a source volume. Possible causes include not having any NTFS volumes on Windows XP or Windows 2003 source systems, and not having enough free disk space."

Since neither my source or destination drives are NTFS (both FAT32 since the old laptop came with ME not XP), I assume that's the relevant part of the error. I can't really reformat the laptop drive since that would defeat the purpose of what I want to do.

Thanks anyway.

 

[Bill Gates]

Thanks for your help but it doesn't look like it's going to work. I tried to do what you're suggesting but in VMware converter I get this error message: "Failed to take snapshot of a source volume. Possible causes include not having any NTFS volumes on Windows XP or Windows 2003 source systems, and not having enough free disk space."

Since neither my source or destination drives are NTFS (both FAT32 since the old laptop came with ME not XP), I assume that's the relevant part of the error. I can't really reformat the laptop drive since that would defeat the purpose of what I want to do.

Thanks anyway.

You can convert a mounted FAT32 volume to NTFS using the "convert" command from the CMD prompt on a Windows computer. Keep in mind that it's a one-way street though.

 

[DukeofAnkh]

You can convert a mounted FAT32 volume to NTFS using the "convert" command from the CMD prompt on a Windows computer. Keep in mind that it's a one-way street though.

Thanks. I'll make a complete backup next time I put that computer onto the network and give it a go.

 

[jive turkey]

Hey Duke, did you get this to work? I have used the VM converter on my windows machine, but when I plug it into the Mac I can't access it because of permission problems (which I can't seem to change).

If you succeeded, please tell me how!