Booting a guest from USB-rawdisk

In case anybody is interested: I just managed to boot a 2k3 guest from a USB-rawdisk.

All you have to do is rewrite the rawdisk descriptorfile so that it uses an IDE-geometry instead of the SCSI-geometry that VMserver uses.

Original file created by VMserver - doesn't work:

\# Disk DescriptorFile

version=1

CID=d645021c

parentCID=ffffffff

createType="fullDevice"

\# Extent description

RW 156296385 FLAT "
.\PhysicalDrive5" 0

\# The Disk Data Base

#DDB

ddb.virtualHWVersion = "4"

ddb.geometry.cylinders = "9729"

ddb.geometry.heads = "255"

ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"

ddb.geometry.biosCylinders = "9729"

ddb.geometry.biosHeads = "255"

ddb.geometry.biosSectors = "63"

ddb.adapterType = "buslogic"

Edited version that works:

\# Disk DescriptorFile

version=1

CID=721dd492

parentCID=ffffffff

createType="fullDevice"

\# Extent description

RW 156296385 FLAT "
.\PhysicalDrive5" 0

\# The Disk Data Base

#DDB

ddb.toolsVersion = "0"

ddb.adapterType = "ide"

ddb.geometry.biosSectors = "63"

ddb.geometry.biosHeads = "255"

ddb.geometry.biosCylinders = "1024"

ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"

ddb.geometry.heads = "16"

ddb.geometry.cylinders = "16383"

ddb.virtualHWVersion = "4"

Don't do this on a XP-host as XP will assign driveletters without asking ...

Ulli