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Moving Virtual Machine Files from one SSD to Another

 
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# 1  
Old 11-04-2014
Moving Virtual Machine Files from one SSD to Another
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)...
  1. Use 'dd' to simply write the Old drive over the New drive, then resize the partition afterward to use up the remaining space?
  2. Or: First, format the New SSD, then simply copy/transfer the files from the Old SSD to the New SSD
  3. 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
# 2  
Old 11-04-2014
If possible I would pick option 2, since that allows you to use the new ext4 filesystem, which supports online defragmentation. That can be important for virtual machines. But just copying the files has one problem.

There's very little "magic" about UNIX/Linux filesystems which won't be immaculately duplicated with a proper backup/restore, but sparse files is one of them. They will "explode" in size from all their sparse parts suddenly not being sparse anymore. Are your virtual machine disk images stored as sparse files? An easy way to check is to compare its size in ls -lh filename with its size in du -hs filename... A sparse file could be many gigabytes smaller according to du than ls since ls only knows its length.

Sparse files is also one of the times you'd really want ext4, since their random-ish patterns of use and writing can fragment worse than other files.
This User Gave Thanks to Corona688 For This Post:
mrm5102
# 3  
Old 11-04-2014
Hey Corona, thanks alot for your quick reply!

Ok, cool... I was hoping you'd say that, seems to be the easiest option as well.

Can windows mount an ext4 fs? I mean I run VMPlayer from my Linux partition, but I was just curious if for some reason I would need to access the files on that SSD from a Windows PC, if that would be possible... I'm guessing there is probably some software out there that has a workaround for this, but I was hoping it would mount without needing any extra software...

Thanks again for you reply, very much appreciated!

Thanks Again,
Matt
# 4  
Old 11-04-2014
I think there is a third-party driver for ext3 in Windows which has limited but improving support for ext4.
# 5  
Old 11-04-2014
Quote:
Originally Posted by mrm5102
Ok, cool... I was hoping you'd say that, seems to be the easiest option as well.
My statement had a caveat, and also a question. Having not answered that question, it may be subject to that caveat.

If you'd answer it, I'd really appreciate it.
# 6  
Old 11-04-2014
Hey Corona, sorry must have missed the " ? "...

Yes, my virtual machine is broken up into many files.

For example, this is what one of my VMs (*Windows XP) looks like:
Code:
-rw------- 1 root root        599 Apr 19  2012 Windows XP Professional-0.vmdk
-rw------- 1 root root        627 Apr 19  2012 Windows XP Professional-1.vmdk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2145845248 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional-s001.vmdk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2146631680 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional-s002.vmdk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2146762752 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional-s003.vmdk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2146762752 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional-s004.vmdk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2146762752 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional-s005.vmdk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2144468992 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional-s006.vmdk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2146566144 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional-s007.vmdk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2144141312 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional-s008.vmdk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2146762752 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional-s009.vmdk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2146762752 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional-s010.vmdk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2144010240 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional-s011.vmdk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2146762752 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional-s012.vmdk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2146762752 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional-s013.vmdk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2146762752 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional-s014.vmdk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2146762752 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional-s015.vmdk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2146762752 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional-s016.vmdk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2145845248 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional-s017.vmdk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2146107392 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional-s018.vmdk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2146762752 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional-s019.vmdk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2146762752 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional-s020.vmdk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   11010048 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional-s021.vmdk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root       8684 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional.nvram
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root       1605 Nov  3 10:53 Windows XP Professional.vmdk
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root          0 Apr 19  2012 Windows XP Professional.vmsd
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root       4885 Nov  3 18:31 Windows XP Professional.vmx
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root        382 Oct 31 11:16 Windows XP Professional.vmxf
........................... etc ...........................

Thanks,
Matt
# 7  
Old 11-12-2014
Quote:
Originally Posted by mrm5102
Hey Corona, sorry must have missed the " ? "...

Yes, my virtual machine is broken up into many files.
Unfortunately, that's not what I asked.
 
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