VMware Diskmount utility

below is a excerpt from user’s manual:

 

The VMware DiskMount Utility allows you to mount an unused virtual disk in a Windows host file system as a separate drive without needing to connect to the virtual disk from within a virtual machine. You can mount specific volumes of a virtual disk if the virtual disk is partitioned.

DiskMount is a command line program called vmware-mount that works similarly to how you use the subst command on Windows. Once the disk is mounted, you can read from and write to the disk as if it were a separate file system with its own drive letter on your network. However, you cannot power on any virtual machine that uses this disk until the disk is unmounted.

You can perform activities such as scanning a virtual disk for viruses and transferring

files between the host system and a powered off virtual machine.

When you are finished using the mounted virtual disk, delete the mapping so the

virtual disk can be used by virtual machines again.

Considerations for Mounting Virtual Disks

• You can use DiskMount with virtual disks created with VMware ESX Server 2,

VMware GSX Server 3 and 2.5.1, VMware ACE, and VMware Workstation 5 and 4.

Note: Virtual disks created with VMware ACE cannot be encrypted virtual disks.

Encrypted virtual disks cannot be mounted with DiskMount.

• You can run DiskMount on any versions of Windows 2000, Windows XP, or

Windows Server 2003.

• You must mount virtual disks as drive D: or greater. You cannot specify a letter

already in use on the host.

• You can mount volumes formatted with FAT (12/16/32) or NTFS only. If the virtual disk has a mix of partitions (volumes) where, for example, a partition is unformatted or is formatted with a Linux operating system and another partition is formatted with a Windows operating system, you can mount the Windows partition with DiskMount.

• You can mount a virtual disk that has a snapshot. Any changes you make to the virtual disk while it is mounted are discarded when you revert to the snapshot.

• You cannot mount a virtual disk if any of its .vmdk files are compressed or have read-only permissions. Change these attributes before mounting the virtual disk.

• You cannot mount a virtual disk that is currently being used by a running or suspended virtual machine. Only disks that are in a powered off virtual machine can be mounted.

 after installation, by default this command installed into C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware DiskMount Utility

below is the example in my laptop:

VMware diskmount

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware DiskMount Utility>vmware-mount.exe /p "E:\vm\MSCS-1\Windows 2000 Advanced Server.vmdk"

Volume 1 : 3074 Mb

Volume 2 : 125 Mb

Volume 3 : 125 Mb

Volume 4 : 768 Mb

 

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware DiskMount Utility>vmware-mount.exe h: "E:\vm\MSCS-1\Windows 2000 Advanced Server.vmdk"

 

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware DiskMount Utility>vmware-mount.exe

H:\  =>  E:\vm\MSCS-1\Windows 2000 Advanced Server.vmdk

 

 

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware DiskMount Utility>vmware-mount.exe h: /d

 

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware DiskMount Utility>vmware-mount.exe /v:2 h: "E:\vm\MSCS-1\Windows 2000 Advanced Server.vmdk"

 

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware DiskMount Utility>vmware-mount.exe h: /d