Virtual HDD mounting

[laur3ooo]

If you ever used VMware Player (or any similar/superior product for that matter) then you might have an ideea of what I'm asking. I want to know if there is any possibility of incorporating mounting of .vmdk files (used by VMware, Virtual PC, Qemu, ...) in D-Tools as virtual drives of any type on the host machine (If you still don't know what I'm saying visit www.vmware.com or any other similar site). I know where some issues may reside, the .vmdk files can emulate a HDD, an thus the HDD it is emulating can be formatted to any file system: fat12/16/32, ntfs, extfs etc (and so there are a great number of filesystems to emulate). Second, in the virtual machine, the mounted .vmdk can emulate a HDD and can have an IDE ATAPI adapter or a Buslogic/LSI-Logic SCSI Adapter (which are of course emulated, in the virtual machine, mind you). So the bottom line is: I want to mount as virtual drives (of any type), on my phisical PC, the disks I create and use in my Virtual Machines. If such a thing cannot be incorporated in D-Tools (by any means), please point me to a program that can accomplish this function in any degree. I would very much appreciate any professional answer.

PS: To my knowledge, the virtual machine software i use (VMW Ace & VMW Player) haven't got such a function implemented (yet).

[Underheaven]

...

point me to ... that can accomplish this function in any degree

I can think of two ways to do this but it still requires the overhead of having VMWare loaded. So this is probably NOT at all what you want though the end result is the same--all the data in your virtual hard drive files is accessible.

1. Use the shared folders feature.
2. Share your hard drive as a network share and access all of the information that way.

[bojo]

im a little confused about this.

do u have a physical machine (runnign say winxp). and that makes other virtural machines (running say linux) in it?

either way from what i see, you would need to use what Underheaven said. Share the foldersof the files u need to get to.

it says all the vm are different, and the only way the can interact is lan.

Basically, you just type this in:

vmware-mount x: "c:\virtual machines\vm1\virtualdisk.vmdk" /v:1

to mount the first volum of that vmdk file as your x: drive.

To list all the volumes in a vmdk file, you would do this:

vmware-mount "c:\virtual machines\vm1\virtualdisk.vmdk" /p

To unmount your x: drive you would type this:

vmware-mount x: /d

from what i see vmware mount seems to be included with vmware (no idea what version).

does this help? or have i completely missed it lol

[mikkokh]

Nice! I have already virtual Floppy drive and two virtual DVD drives (Thanks for Daemon Tools :-) )... and now i can get also virtual HDD drive.

[thetest]

If such a thing cannot be incorporated in D-Tools (by any means), please point me to a program that can accomplish this function in any degree. I would very much appreciate any professional answer.

Yes there is a very useful program called CrossCrypt (Filedisk)...it works by creating an image file or container of a harddisk drive...

Then it can be mounted into FileDisk's virtual drive..and used as a regular harddisk..It will show up as Local Disk in My Computer...

It even supports encryption...so ppl cant mount ur image without the password.

U can burn the image to a cd and take it to another comp...and mount there also..

Only problem is its command line..

Eg. filedisk /mount c:\image.dat f:
to mount the image in a new F: virtual drive which is created on the fly..and instantly.

[djbobo]

You can also use VM Back - more info and download incl. source
http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vdk.html

[LydMix]

SDK for a solution to support .vmdk files

Both the "shared folders" and "network share" feature require that the VM is started, and usually you have started one VM, but remember data situated on another VM.... that is shutdown ;-)

Accessing such data, can only be done if you mount the virtual disc, or power up the second VM.

A .vmdk file is basically the same as a bootable ISO file, and should be as easily mountable as such.
The vmware-mount util was valid until version 5.5, but works no more (current version 7.1).

The code-guys at DT will probably be able to support .vmdk files after studing:

http://www.vmware.com/download/sdk/virtualdisk.html

Lyd