can virtual machines run on a FAT32 drive?

bugzy3188

I am preparing my home lab to get my hands dirty with all of this new info that I am taking in, my only problem right now is lack of hardware. I am running a laptop with 2GB of ram x86 OS and just under 75 GB of storage space. I was told that 64 bit is a must have so I am in the process of seeing if my system will even run it right now. As far as the storage space, I have an external 2 TB USB drive that I am hoping to use. The only drawback is its formatted in FAT32 and has to stay that way. Can I run virtual machines of of that box? I run VMware btw. Thanks in advance for any advice...

Krunchi

You can't run a X64 VM on a base os of X86.

As for the Fat32 just go to command line as admin and run CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS and you can convert your file system to NTFS without formatting.

Your 2GB of ram is going to be an issue the X64 would use up all of it and need more leaving none for your VM's. Either get more Ram or go with a base OS of a lite Linux like XUbuntu and you could run a few X86 VM's.

Devilsbane

To run a 64 bit application you need to have a 64 bit processor (pretty sure all new ones are now) and then a 64 bit operating system. You can however have a 64 bit processor that runs a 32 bit os, but then you still can't run a 64 bit application. Does that make sense?

The convert command above will work, but you always want to back up your data before doing something like that. You will also want to ensure that all of your machines that you use that disk with can read NTFS (if for some reason you are still running Windows 98, it can't read NTFS and won't see it at all). 2GB will get you working, but as Krunchi said its not ideal. You could probably only have a single VM running. Maybe 2 if you don't mind slowing things up.