I’m a Windows user primarily, but lately I had to use Linux quite a lot for my master’s thesis. So i thought „Why not use the best of both worlds?“. So in installed VMWares excelent virtualization Tool VMWare Workstation. I then added the whole disk as SCSI drive for the VM, did a few kernel adjustments to support the VMWare hypervisor and its booting. Great! But behold my friends, it would have been too easy without an error.
vmx| I120+ You are using a SCSI physical disk. SCSI physical disk dual-boot performance is poor. The installed operating system might not boot correctly in the VM. However, SCSI physical disks operate normally if used exclusively within the VM.
vmx| I120+ ---------------------------------------
Worker#0| I120: DISK: OPEN scsi0:1 'C:\Users\Benjamin\Documents\Virtual Machines\Gentoo\Gentoo.vmdk' persistent R[]
Worker#0| I120: W32Util_DismountVolumes: Locking and dismounting volumes backed by a particular disk area (offset 0 size 256060514304) on PhysicalDrive3...
Worker#0| I120: W32Util_DismountVolumes: Successfully locked volume \\?\Volume{d3907704-5817-4f21-bf74-xxx} on PhysicalDrive3.
Worker#0| I120: W32Util_DismountVolumes: Successfully dismounted volume \\?\Volume{d3907704-5817-4f21-bf74-xxx} on PhysicalDrive3.
Worker#0| I120: W32Util_DismountVolumes: Successfully locked volume \\?\Volume{6aaf75ed-20e5-4f2d-97c8-xxx} on PhysicalDrive3.
Worker#0| I120: W32Util_DismountVolumes: Successfully dismounted volume \\?\Volume{6aaf75ed-20e5-4f2d-97c8-xxx} on PhysicalDrive3.
Worker#0| I120: DISKLIB-DEVCRW: Facts: Cap=500118192 Phys C/H/S=1024/255/63 BIOS C/H/S=1024/255/63 Adap=IDE
Worker#0| I120: DISKLIB-DSCPTR: Opened [0]: "\\.\PhysicalDrive3" 0 partitionUUID \\?\scsi#disk&ven_samsung&prod_ssd_840_pro_seri#4&17780f2c&0&030000#{53f56307-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b} (0xa)
Worker#0| I120: DISKLIB-LINK : Opened 'C:\Users\Benjamin\Documents\Virtual Machines\Gentoo\Gentoo.vmdk' (0xa): fullDevice, 500118192 sectors / 238.5 GB.
Worker#0| I120: DISKLIB-LIB : Opened "C:\Users\Benjamin\Documents\Virtual Machines\Gentoo\Gentoo.vmdk" (flags 0xa, type fullDevice).
Worker#0| I120: DISK: Disk 'C:\Users\Benjamin\Documents\Virtual Machines\Gentoo\Gentoo.vmdk' has UUID '60 00 c2 95 0f 2b e2 9d-70 d8 f1 9e f8 34 bf d3'
Worker#0| I120: DISK: OPEN 'C:\Users\Benjamin\Documents\Virtual Machines\Gentoo\Gentoo.vmdk' Geo (496149/16/63) BIOS Geo (31130/255/63)
vmx| I120: FILE: FileDeletionRetry: Non-retriable error encountered (C:\Users\Benjamin\Documents\Virtual Machines\Gentoo\Gentoo.vmx~): Unknown error 2 (0x2) (2)
vmx| I120: DISK: Opening disks took 36 ms.
vmx| I120: TimeTracker host to guest rate conversion 1042169359 @ 3399019000Hz -> 0 @ 3399019000Hz
vmx| I120: TimeTracker host to guest rate conversion ((x * 2147483648) >> 31) + -1042169359
vmx| I120: timeTracker.globalProgressMaxAllowanceMS: 2000
vmx| I120: timeTracker.globalProgressToAllowanceNS: 1000
vmx| I120: USB: Initializing 'Virtual Hub' backend
vmx| I120: USB: Initializing 'Generic' backend
vmx| I120: USBGW: Write arbitrator op:15 len:4
vmx| I120: USBGW: Write arbitrator op:0 len:4
vmx| I120: USBGW: Write arbitrator op:27 len:96
vmx| I120: USBGW: Write arbitrator op:13 len:16
vmx| I120: USB: Initializing 'Virtual HID' backend
sensorThread| I120: VTHREAD start thread 10 "sensorThread" host id 3344
And on screen I get an Error saying vmware could not sync the disks.
The solution is to this problem is quiet easy: Mark the disk as offline in Windows Disk Management and check that it is not write protected. To do so open a command promt as admin and use the following commands:
C:\Windows\system32>diskpart Microsoft DiskPart-Version 6.3.9600 Copyright (C) 1999-2013 Microsoft Corporation. DISKPART> SELECT DISK 3 DISKPART> OFFLINE DISK DISKPART> ATTRIBUTES DISK CLEAR READONLY
– Done. Have fun using you Linux in a VM and as normal boot.