Vmware on external hdd

nel

Does anyone have this setup? where you station your vmware images on an external usb 2 drive?
how is the performance etc? any problems?

Sie

I dont use it but I wouldnt expect any problems aslong as your external HD is up to spec.

Do bear in mind however that some 'Virtual' software does not support USB devices and right now I cannot think which!

nel

so you mean in vmware where you can browse for an image you cannot just point it to the external disk?

Sie

I mean when you have the virtual machine up and running there one of the 'virtual' applications cannot access USB drives.

IE In Virtual Machine One - Windows XP you cannot access the USB drive plugged into the host machine.

Now this may have been sorted in later versions of the program and as i said right now i cant even remember the program!

Either way im pretty sure you'll be fine

nel

no i dont mean for the virtual machines to access the usb hdd.i.e from my computer or anything.

what i mean is the actual virtual hard disks - can these be moved from "c:\virtual machines" (where they are stored in vmware server) to the actual external hard disk. so vmware will be looking at the virtual hard disks (now on the external drive) and will be loading them from there?

Sie

Yes that would be fine. Just remember in the VMWare setting to point to their new location.

Sorry for my confusing responses, kinda hit the ground running when I got here this morning and im only just slowing down now.

Atleast days gone fast!!

shednik

nel wrote:

Does anyone have this setup? where you station your vmware images on an external usb 2 drive?
how is the performance etc? any problems?

I don't recommend this at all, I ruined a 200 GB SATA drive when i ran 3 VMs at once. May have just been my luck but id never try it again.

Sie

shednik wrote:

nel wrote:

Does anyone have this setup? where you station your vmware images on an external usb 2 drive?
how is the performance etc? any problems?

I don't recommend this at all, I ruined a 200 GB SATA drive when i ran 3 VMs at once. May have just been my luck but id never try it again.

What happened? and by ruined you mean lost data?

nel

well i run multiple vm's on my internal disk and no damage? so why would it to an external? only major difference is the connection type?

JDMurray

shednik wrote:

I don't recommend this at all, I ruined a 200 GB SATA drive when i ran 3 VMs at once. May have just been my luck but id never try it again.

Was the SATA drive in an external enclosure connected via USB or Firewire? I run three or four VMWare instances all the time from a local disk and have never had any problems. I can't how running multiple VMWare instances would damage a perfectly operational hard disk.

shednik

JDMurray wrote:

shednik wrote:

I don't recommend this at all, I ruined a 200 GB SATA drive when i ran 3 VMs at once. May have just been my luck but id never try it again.

Was the SATA drive in an external enclosure connected via USB or Firewire? I run three or four VMWare instances all the time from a local disk and have never had any problems. I can't how running multiple VMWare instances would damage a perfectly operational hard disk.

Yes, I ran a SATA drive in a USB External Enclosure...worked great for a day or 2 then began having delayed write fail error messages and i lost data on the drive. So i decided to run them form a drive internally. I'm not sure what did it, it worked perfectly fine where i used the drive previously. Never had a problem running something off USB previously but would rather not risk it with a good drive.

JDMurray

It sounds like the USB interface in the enclosure failed or wasn't being powered properly (the power adapter failed). Did you try removing the drive from he enclosure and running it directly off the motherboard to check if the drive had indeed failed?

shednik

Not as of yet...but that is a good idea to try i def will

widjerd

i run an xp pro image off my 2 gig usb pen, works great.

JDMurray

I would point out that the cheaper external drive enclosures may only have a USB 1.1 interface, which has *MUCH* less data throughput than the more expensive USB 2.0 and Firewire 400/800 (1394b) enclosures. If anyone is having problems with performance problems with an external drive, check what version USB the interface is using to see if it's not a USB 1.1 clunker.

nel

so all round thoughts are that they run fine off external hd's?

i was looking to by the 120gb WD 2.5" pocketbook (i think its called that!). i want something small and light for my laptop bcos its filling up fast! any thoughts on this product? i thought it wasnt a bad price at £52 gbp?