This section covers the pre-installation tasks, such as choosing the media option and how to partition the MS Windows disks.
Installation Media
Disk Partitioning
Installation Media
A virtual machine’s operating system (Windows, Linux, Netware etc.) can be installed by attaching the physical media CD or DVD or by using an image file (ISO). I prefer the latter method because it’s way faster and more flexible .... you don’t need to play disc jockey to mount and dismount physical medias.
Creating an image file from a physical CD or DVD is really easy with OS X. Start the Disk Utility located in the Application/Utilities folder and follow the next steps :
1. Put the operating system (Windows, Linux) CD or DVD into your Mac’s drive
2. Select the mounted media in Disk Utility and click the New Image button on the toolbar.
3. Enter the name of the image file and choose DVD/CD master as the preferred image format.
4. Click the Save button to create the disk image. The CDR file extension can be renamed to ISO but VMware Fusion also perfectly handles CDR extensions.
A virtual machine’s operating system (Windows, Linux, Netware etc.) can be installed by attaching the physical media CD or DVD or by using an image file (ISO). I prefer the latter method because it’s way faster and more flexible .... you don’t need to play disc jockey to mount and dismount physical medias.
Creating an image file from a physical CD or DVD is really easy with OS X. Start the Disk Utility located in the Application/Utilities folder and follow the next steps :
1. Put the operating system (Windows, Linux) CD or DVD into your Mac’s drive
2. Select the mounted media in Disk Utility and click the New Image button on the toolbar.
3. Enter the name of the image file and choose DVD/CD master as the preferred image format.
4. Click the Save button to create the disk image. The CDR file extension can be renamed to ISO but VMware Fusion also perfectly handles CDR extensions.
Disk Partitioning
There are several solutions for this problem and I will try to cover two of them.
There is a really basic partitioning schema that consists of creating one big partition (Partition C) and mix the user data with the operating system files. This is the default configuration choosen by the Windows installer and I highly discourage to use it.
Always try to separate the operating system files from the user data. This can be simply achieved by creating two different partitions, one for the Windows operating system and another for the user files.
Single virtual disk :
On a single virtual disk, create two partitions and use the first one for Windows and the second one for the user data.
On two separate virtual disks, create one partition on each of them to fill the entire available space. This method allows you to have a separate virtual disk for the operating system and a virtual disk for the user data.
There are several solutions for this problem and I will try to cover two of them.
There is a really basic partitioning schema that consists of creating one big partition (Partition C) and mix the user data with the operating system files. This is the default configuration choosen by the Windows installer and I highly discourage to use it.
Always try to separate the operating system files from the user data. This can be simply achieved by creating two different partitions, one for the Windows operating system and another for the user files.
Single virtual disk :
On a single virtual disk, create two partitions and use the first one for Windows and the second one for the user data.
- Easy to setup and maintain
- Prevent user data corruption when system partition corrupts
- Single virtual disk for operating system AND user files
- Separate operating system from user data
- Backup of virtual disk always includes user data and operating system
On two separate virtual disks, create one partition on each of them to fill the entire available space. This method allows you to have a separate virtual disk for the operating system and a virtual disk for the user data.
- More complex to setup
- Physically isolate the two partitions (separate disks)
- Separate operating system from user data
- Separate backup of operating system and user data virtual disks is possible