Lion + VMWare Fusion(Windows7 64bit virtualized rawdisk)

[Krisiacik]

Hi guys, I have here a nice story and a problem.

 

I was a Windows technician from 1997 to 2008, then went on to another job. So my really professional understanding of thing only reaches to the Core2duo era. I started missing things when EFI and GUID, GPT etc. came.

 

One year ago on a nice sunny day in spring, I had a spare weekend and seeing the Apple momentum, I said to myself, lets play a little bit, and went to a nearest store and bought Snow Leopard for 29 eur which was fun and very cheap

From my rig, which was a G43 chipset intel MB and E7600 Core2Duo 3 GHz CPU from 2009, I took out my standard 0.5GB SerialATA Seagate7200.12 Windows 7-32bit Ultimate Harddrive and put the HDD aside. I put in a factory clean, spare Parallel ATA 120MB Barracuda 7200.7. After tinkering through two days and learning the tricks, I managed to install Snow Leopard with [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] bootloader, and started using OS X. I put back my Windows drive and was happy to discover multiboot into OSX or Win with no additional effort. I liked it very much but after a time, I started to have a dilemma which OS to launch at any given time and situation. So I discovered VMWare Fusion, which enabled me to run both OSes alongside (and Unity mode was really jawdroppping) and I was very happy with it.

 

But HERE IS THE MYSTERY.

 

I did NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in order for it to work. I just installed VMware Fusion4 and this Fusion simply incorporated my totaly separate Windows7 hardrive which just happend to be connected on the bus and was a totally standard installation predating the [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url]-MacOS . After installing, Fusion presented me with a ready-to-use Virtual Machine, which was named Bootcamp, but the moment I clicked on it, it renamed itself before my eyes to Windows 7. I started it and it run, my real windows from a real separate HDD run virtualized in VM. I did not know anything about bootcamp, vmdx, VMs,...etc.. I even made an upgrade to Lion when it came out, repeated the whole installation of newer [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url]+xMove(and all the crazy tools) etc and SnowLeopardtoLion, and fusion..and it stil behaved like this. It seemed to me, that THIS is the standard behaviour, I did not have any reason to investigate any details about this.

 

I liked everything very much and I decided to give my OSes a gift in form of a new processor.

 

A week ago, I bought a sandy bridge Intel MB + Corei5 2500K..and a OCZ Vertex3 which is fast like hell. Everything went ok, until this Fusion business. There is no ready-to-use virtual machine anymore.

 

Trying to desperately solve this (the unity mode is really cool), I learned quite much about bootcamp, virtual machines, virtualbox, virtual disks, raw disks, vmdk and vmx files, manual editing of config files in fusion virtual machines, etc..etc..After I understand how these work in relation to each other, THAT FIRST VIRTUAL MACHINE SHOULD NEVER HAVE EXISTED IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Fusion does not support creating in GUI virtual machines that use raw physical disks, only virtual disks. It doesnt even support more than 1 virtual disk. And it needs BOOTCAMP to be able to get to the Windows partitions.

 

I just cannot understand how the hell did that previous fusion attach! my windows drive, which did not! have ANY mac bootcamp partition, and created a virtual machine that boots physical! disk which is furthermore a separate! drive OMG

 

My present rig is DP67 intel board, 2500K i5 cpu, 128 OCZ Vertex3 as OSX drive, separate 500GB Barracuda SATA drive with 64bit W7U..

I would like to be able to run that Win exactly the way like the old system.

I need to be able to run either

1) native WIN7 - for hardcore apps like Photoshop, Audition (its my job) and games etc..

or

2) MAC + that win7 in live VM to check for light stuff

 

But even if I manage somehow manually set everything -create a VM fooled to boot from physical drive, etc.etc..it says there is no operating system on the drive, when the VM finished the bios boot phase an tries to boot Windows.

 

Can somebody help? but please do not advice changes in my workflow or in HW. I would give a chance to Parallels but I suspect it doesnt have Unity? Does it? The best would be a positive solution from somebody with deep experience in VMware stuff..

 

Regards,

Krisiacik