For other distro, we will need to know how to manually make a partition bootable. However, I am using Slackware, so these steps are typically for Slackware. I had converted many guest OS systems using the steps mention, it works quite well and it took not longer than 10 minutes to finish. Once we reached here, we can remove the CD installer or ISO image from the guest OS and let it start as per normal. Create the hda* device file in /mnt/dev if required. From here, edit /etc/nf and /etc/fstab, make sure we change all the entry of sda to hda. After boot up the system using the installer disk, mount the virtual disk partition to /mnt.

Step 4: Make the guest OS boot from hda instead of sda – First, use the Slackware installer CD or ISO image to boot up.

Step 3: Add the modify virtual disk image – Goto Edit virtual machine settings again, this time use Add to add a new disk, and make sure we select Use an existing disk and browse the the modified Linux.vmdk that we had done in step 2.

After this, edit the Linux.vmdk file, and change:ĭdb.adapterType = 'lsilogic' to ddb.adapterType = 'ide' Set the “TRUE” to “FALSE” and remove the scsi0.virtualDev line. Inside this file would contain the following entries:

vmdk file of the guest OS – For example, in my guest OS, Linux, it will have a Linux.vmx file. This can be done by doing: Edit Virtual Machine Settings -> Select the SCSI disk -> Press the “Remove” button

Step 1: Delete the Virtual SCSI disk and remove SCSI from the system – This may sound like a very drastic measure, but removing SCSI disk does not destroy the virtual disk images.

So, this little guide only applicable to Linux that uses lilo. However, I am using Slackware, which uses lilo as the OS loader. The steps are quite simple, so far no lost data or guest OS failure encountered. Below are the steps taken by me to convert the SCSI disk to IDE disk. So far, I notice, in software raid setup, Linux run best with IDE as the virtual disk emulation. I had mentioned this in one of my response to the comments I received. I tried with one machine without software raid, the default SCSI virtual disk works fine, even in I/O high load. All of my 3 machines that hosts VMware are using software raid mirror. After a few experiment, I notice, the problem only exist in my Linux that uses software raid.

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