Virtual Machine software supporting physical 3TB disk drive

[Stupify]

I want to run FreeNAS on a virtual machine (Windows 7 64bit host) but have physical/raw disk access to a 3TB drive. What Virtual Machine software supports this? I have tried VMWare Player and it doesn't support more than 2TB physical drives.

 

[Yell]

try virtualbox should work, see https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=51922 he done it successful.
(same setup as you)

 

[Stupify]

i have tried VMWare Workstation 9 as well and no luck.

i got it going the way i wanted with VirtualBox with lot of fiddling and some complicated mechanisms. i had to rely on command-line to create a .vmdk file to the 3TB physical drive and then add that file as an existing drive in the virtual machine i wanted to link it to. For those who may be interested in this here are the links and information that helped me achieve all of it:

This site helped me to how to ensure windows doesn't muck around with the drive numbering which could mess up the VirtualBox disk linkage.

Code:

http://scarygliders.net/2011/10/28/virtualbox-on-windows-7-host-with-raw-disk-access-solution-to-randomly-changing-disc-assignment-numbers/ 

Here is the command to create .vmdk file that I came about after following it

Code:

vboxmanage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename "f:\vm\3tbraw2.vmdk" -rawdisk "\\.\GLOBALROOT\ArcName\multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)"

This site helped me ensure how to ensure Windows allows VirtualBox to take control of the drive

Code:

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=38914

Re: VM on RAW disk on Windows 7 host

Postby Korkman » 16. Feb 2011, 02:34
Success!

In summary:

To gain full hard drive access in a VBox guest on Win7 host

0. close all open programs or documents on any partition on the disk to pass-through
1. run DISKPART (command line utility)*
2. select hard drive carefully using SELECT DISK. disk numbering starts at zero. you can roughly verify your selection with LIST PARTITION if you know what your partitions should look like or LIST DISK to see disk sizes.
3. offline the disk using OFFLINE DISK. all volumes will disappear from windows explorer.
4. ATTRIBUTES DISK CLEAR READONLY
5. verify with ATTRIBUTES DISK
6. create VMDK file as shown in several howtos on the web
7. enjoy
As always with the dumb numeric representation of physical disks in windows: keep an eye on the ordering of your disks, especially removables, before booting the wrong one.

*administrative rights required for operating vbox and utilities but not for desktop

The last step i believe can be done from Computer Management by right-clicking the drive and selecting Offline. However, I don't know how it clears the attributes the way the above instructions do it in step #4.

Anyhow for now I got it going as I wanted it.