Disk Partition under VMware
 

disk partition under VMware

when i installed red hat Linux under VMware. Chose the "create a new virtual disk". And there is a warning
"Warning: The partition talbe on device sda was unreadable. To create new partitions it must be initialized,causing the loss of ALL DATA on this drive. This operation will override any previous installation choices about which drives to ignore. Would you like to initialize this drive, erasing All Data?"

I am not sure is it OK to accept to initialize the driver. Since my physical driver has only 1 big partitioin. Will this operation affect my files on the real disk??

Thanks!

If you used a virtual disk when you created the virtual machine your guest OS (Redhat Linux in your case) does not access your physical hard disk but VMware is creating a large file (like <somename>.vmdk) on your host system and is simulating a physical disk for your guest system. You should verify this by checking the "Virtual Machine Settings". When you select "Edit virtual machine settings" you can check "Hard Disk". It should tell you the name of the "Disk File". If that is the case, you are safe.

best,
Werner

ok, i see the *.vmdk file there. So it is OK to initialize the disk? How VM ensure the *.vmdk file (and other files under VM) will not affect my physical disk. Just curious.

The whole point of VMware is to simulate a PC to a guest operating system. When your "create a new virtual machine" in VMware, you can configure the system that VMware is going to simulate. Check out the configuration for the CD-Rom for example. You can tell VMware to either use the real, physical CD-Rom in your host system, or to simulate a CD-Rom and to use a file as image. In the latter case VMware simulates a CD-Rom drive that is loaded with a CD that corresponds to the image file - your guest system is reading from this simulated device as if it were a real physical CD - never knowing a difference. The same is true for the hard disk. When creating a new virtual machine you can (and this is also the default) decide to create a virtual hard disk. In this case VMware is using a large file on your file system and simulates a hard disk. And when your guest system is reading and writing to its disk, it is really reading and writing to the *.vmdk file - never knowing the difference. You can even specify if VMware should simulate an ATA-disk or a SCSI-attached disk. Your host system may have only one or the other physical hard disk (ATA or SCSI), but VMware simulates whatever you choose for the guest system.

best,
Werner


BTW: These *.vmdk files can get very big. Let's say you specified the simulated disk to be a 20GB disk. VMware is only allocating disk space as is needed by the guest system, i.e., your *.vmdk files are rather small in the beginning. However, as the guest system is using more space of the disk, VMware is allocating more space for the *.vmdk file. Eventually, when the guest system is using the entire 20GB of the disk, the *.vmdk files will be 20GB.