Running Virtual PC VMs off of an external HD

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adam30k

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I have Microsoft Virtual PC virtual machines, three of them, that I'd like to use on my Mac whether or not I use Parallels, VM Fusion or something else that works.

Here's the catch.. I need a way to use these virtual machines off of the same external HD at a PC from time to time which runs Microsoft Virtual PC. (It's for a Windows administration college course where we run Server 08 along with 7 and XP) I can't seem to find Virtual PC 2007 for the Mac since it's discontinued.

(I am currently troubleshooting Parallels which seems to be able to import MS Virtual PC virtual machines but I'm having issues running it.. although that's a different issue.. if Parallels is my best option I'll work on fixing the issues I'm having)
 
I guess my main issue is accessing a VM file on my Mac while still being able to access it on a PC. Right now VMWare won't access it and Parallels supposedly can import a Virtual PC VM but I've been having trouble making it work.

I don't think I really need to make the virtual machines portable like I first thought as I'll mainly be making screenshots of the work I do on the systems for assignments. In that case, I can run a VMWare program that will create a VMWare Fusion image within a pre-existing PC. Originally made as a Switch to the Mac tool. So I can run a Windows 7 image I already own on VMWare Fusion, bootup the free Windows Virtual PC inside of Windows 7 with the different VPC VMs I have then run the creator in the VM. Convoluted I know.
 
Since I've decided I don't need to go back and fourth between my Mac and PC, all I needed to do was convert the MS Virtual PC VM into one VMWare could work with. VMWare's Converter program can be fed a virtual machine file from a third party program it doesn't need to be run on the machine you wish to convert. Therefore I can run VMWare Converter on a spare PC I have and have to convert the existing virtual machine files into something VMWare can work with.

I'll have to look into Virtual Box though.. open source is always good.

EDIT: Okay well VMWare Converter didn't work. Says it can't "obtain hardware information for the selected machine". The selected machine is the VMC file from Microsoft Virtual PC. I have the related data files in the same directory as the VMC file. I'll have to look into this later today but in the mean time I thought I'd ask if anyone else has any ideas on converting a Microsoft Virtual PC (*.VMC) into something VMWare or Virtual Box can work with.
 
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You should try Portable Virtualbox, virtualbox accepts vmdk images, dont know about vpc images...

Biggest problem is going to be IO bandwidth and Media type, you know, Virtualization generates lots of I/O operations that can destroy flash drives in little time
 
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