Moving VM XP HD to External Enclosure

[jakk003]

Hi all,

I currently have windows XP installed by VMware Fusion on an internal hard drive. Is it possible to move the hard drive to an external firewire hard drive enclosure and still be able to run windows XP from my Mac Pro?


Thank you in advance for any help you are able to offer.

 

[NRose8989]

In theory is sounds possible. The only problem is that I don't know how to get VMware to go to the directory that the virtual machine is in.

I wanted to move my virtual machine file out of the documents folder and it wouldn't let me.

 

[CarpetMonster]

I haven't tried it exactly this way (only when moving a converted PC to VM image on my xserve) but how about trying this. Copy the VM files to the external disk then in VMware Fusion slecting New, Continue without disk, Use an existing virtual disk and then browsing to the VM on the external disk.

 

[SnakeOiler]

Works well. When it asks if you moved the image or copied it, always choose moved.

 

[RemarkabLee]

Hi all,

I currently have windows XP installed by VMware Fusion on an internal hard drive. Is it possible to move the hard drive to an external firewire hard drive enclosure and still be able to run windows XP from my Mac Pro?


Thank you in advance for any help you are able to offer.

I would imagine the performance of the VM will suffer due to the reduced bandwidth of the external drive when using firewire.

 

[SnakeOiler]

I would imagine the performance of the VM will suffer due to the reduced bandwidth of the external drive when using firewire.

Somewhat. Its not bad. esata works better.

 

[lists.oz]

eSATA performance is OK

If you try eSATA you may find that the performance difference due to disk connectors is reduced or removed. On a MBP with a cardbus eSATA connector we are getting better performance that with the internal disk due to the fact we are using 7200 RPM external drives where as the internal is only 5400. Same bandwidth in/out of both from what I understand.