How to boot a real harddisk in VMWare

Posted by: Lars Steinke 17 years, 10 months ago

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The knack is to install the VMWare SCSI driver (included with VMWare Tools) before booting the SATA or PATA harddisk.

Then configure it in the VMX config file as follows:

scsi0:0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0:0.fileName = "win_raw.vmdk"
scsi0:0.deviceType = "rawDisk"
scsi0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0.virtualDev = "buslogic"
Here's the contents of win_raw.vmdk for my harddrive:

# Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
CID=adf9ef51
parentCID=ffffffff
createType="fullDevice"

# Extent description
RW 625142448 FLAT "/dev/sda" 0

# The Disk Data Base
#DDB
ddb.virtualHWVersion = "3"
ddb.geometry.cylinders = "38913"
ddb.geometry.heads = "255"
ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
ddb.geometry.biosCylinders = "38913"
ddb.geometry.biosHeads = "255"
ddb.geometry.biosSectors = "63"
ddb.adapterType = "buslogic"
ddb.toolsVersion = "6404"

And how to get those parameters? Exents und geometry can for instance be deduced from hdparm /dev/sda:

/dev/sda:
IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
geometry = 38913/255/63, sectors = 625142448, start = 0


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