Hello All,
I recently bought a new 500GB Samsung SSD drive to replace my current
(*at that time) internal 256GB OCZ SSD drive.
Everyday I run my Windows virtual machine
(*as guest) from my Linux OS
(*OpenSuSE 11.4 as host) using VMware Player. I run the VM from an External SSD drive
(*Kingston SSD 128GB) that I attach to my laptop's docking station using a eSata Hard Drive docking station.
What I want to do now is start using my old internal
(*256GB) SSD as my External SSD for my Virtual Machines. I was wondering if anyone would suggest the best way to go about this and also if changing the SSD's format would corrupt the VM's files..?
My 128GB SSD that currently has all my VMs on it is formatted as ext3, and I realized earlier today that the SSD won't get mounted to my Internal SSD's Windows 7 partition because of the ext3 format.
So I guess my question is, what would be the best course of action for moving my VM's files?
Should I do one of these..?:
*When I say "Old" SSD below, I mean the one currently containing the VM files, and when I say "New"I mean my old internal SSD (*the 256GB one)...
- Use 'dd' to simply write the Old drive over the New drive, then resize the partition afterward to use up the remaining space?
- Or: First, format the New SSD, then simply copy/transfer the files from the Old SSD to the New SSD
- I also have Clonezilla to copy from the Old to the New, if that would be better...
If number 2 is the easiest, since no partition resizing would be needed, would it be ok to format the New SSD to something like NTFS so the drive can get recognized by both my Linux and Windows Partitions?
And if doing that is ok, would there be any issue in copying/transferring the VMs from the Old SSD
(*etx3) to the Newly formatted SSD
(*as NTFS)?
If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions, it would be very much appreciated!
Thanks in Advance,
Matt