On Monday June 1 2009, Zhang Weiwu wrote:
On 2009-05-31 10:56:42 +0800 Randall R Schulz
wrote:
On Saturday May 30 2009, Zhang Weiwu wrote:
could virtual machine software make use of a separate harddisk instead of a disk image to improve its performance?
VMware supports it. I use it for my Windows XP. In fact, Windows XP sees a whole drive in what is actually a single partition of one of my physical drives. It's bit odd, but it works fine.
What is the name / terminology used for this? If you give me the right keyword I should be able to google out everything.
As far as I know, there's not special name for it, nor is there anything you're likely to find on Web. When you define a virtual machine you have the option of having the virtualized disks be backed by files (considered the default) or by actual disks or disk partitions.
By the way do you know if I can convert an existing hard-disk image file to a real harddisk?
Offhand, I don't, but there's probably a tool for doing it. And you can always do it from "inside" the virtualized environment, where the OS sees that storage as a real, physical disk. If it's the boot drive, imaging it wouldn't be advisable, but if the drive can be unmounted, then simply copying it at the physical level would suffice. I should point that this capability exists in VMware Workstation. I don't know if it's in the free Server product (it lacks many of the features of Workstation), so you should check that, too. VMware Workstation isn't exactly inexpensive. Randall Schulz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org