At some point, you might want to convert your Boot Camp volume to a true VMware virtual machine using the VMware Converter.
Murphy’s first experiment with VMware Fusion was to access his Boot Camp install of XP while running Leopard. Fusion made it easy. After installing Fusion it was a simple task to add Boot Camp to the list of Virtual Machines on Murphy’s Macbook Pro.
VMware suggests getting away from Boot Camp unless you have a compelling reason to boot into Windows at startup, suggesting that Fusion performs better with non-Boot Camp virtual machines. There are other reasons to do this as well.
First, you don’t get all the features of Fusion with your Boot Camp partition. You can’t suspend the virtual machine and resume it later. In other words, if you’ve quit Fusion you need to go through a Windows reboot next time you use it. With a regular virtual machine Windows opens up right where you suspended it after your last session, saving lots of time. Adding this functionality would have caused a conflict between the VMware session and the state of Boot Camp when it was selected at startup.
Second, a regular virtual machine adds flexibility to your system. You can offload the virtual machine to another drive or a different computer when you need to free up disk space. Moving a Boot Camp partition isn’t so simple, nor is it a supported feature.
Murphy’s going to play around with Fusion a little more. Then he’s going to reclaim the space Boot Camp has been taking up by deleting the partition.
The screencast shows how to covert a Boot Camp partition into a regular Fusion virtual machine. Here are the basic steps Murphy followed:
- Enable Windows sharing on your Mac hosting the Boot Camp partition.
- Run your Boot Camp install under Fusion.
- Install the VMware Converter utility under Windows.
- Use the Converter utility to create the new virtual machine in a folder on your Mac, writing it via Windows sharing.
You’ll probably want to make sure everything you do in Windows works well before you delete your Boot Camp volume.
Related links:
Get a trial version of VMware Fusion.
Download the VMware Converter.
Buy Fusion from Amazon
- $41.99
at the time of this post after a $20 rebate.
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