Accessing Virtual Disks Via Windows

One of the often overlooked features of VMWare Workstation is the Virtual Disk Mapping utility.  Available through the standard VMware Workstation GUI, the tool maps a Windows drive letter to a virtual disk used in a VM.  Mapping a virtual disk can be done much quicker and easier than launching the VM to access the files on the virtual machine’s disks.  This functionality ships with VMware Workstation for Windows; other tools are available for Linux users, but won’t be covered in this article. 

The Virtual Disk Mapping utility is launched from the File menu within VMWare Workstation.

 Select Map or Disconnect Virtual Disks… and click Browse….  Alternatively, you can launch the Virtual Disk Mapping utility directly on a virtual disk by double-clicking on a Hard Disk in the Devices tab of a powered-off virtual machine.

Select a .vmdk file from your file system, pick a drive letter (Z in this case), and choose whether to open it read-only.

Once mapped, the drive will appear as a physical disk (here, the partition named “OS” is mapped to the Z drive on the host).

Files can now be copied freely from the mapped disk.  Re-open the Virtual Disk Mapping utility from the VMware Workstation GUI to disconnect the drive when finished.  Use caution when mapping virtual disks as read/write; this may cause unexpected behavior when launching the VM, particularly when VMware snapshots are involved.  Leave us a comment below if you have anything to add about this VMware feature, or have other virtualization tips and tricks to share.  Please contact us with further questions about how to best use virtualization in your environment.

Tags: Virtual Disk Mapping, virtualization, VMWare Workstation