Vmware Player, Help Installing Win XP with SSD and AHCI

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mothman

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Total noob here to VM's. I currently dual boot Win XP Pro (with slipstreamed AHCI driver) and Win 7 on a 128gb ssd.
I'm building a new rig and want to try running just Win 7 64 and XP Pro Guest with Vmware Player with the same 128gb ssd.
First off do I need to use my XP with slipstreamed AHCI driver ? or does the VM use the same controller as the host. Also in reading about Vmware Player I do see references to SCSI or IDE controllers but no mention of AHCI with XP.
Second is there any rule of thumb for setting up an ssd with a VM.

Thanks for any help
 
Looks like I ask a hard question, it's beneath the pale of the ultra technical discussions here or nobody here runs XP with VMware Player ?
 
When you create/configure the XP VM in VMware player, it uses vm drivers....not the actual hardware drivers.
I just created an XP in player and these were the prompts...
Create new Virtual Machine
I will install OS later
Microsoft Windows - XP
provide a name and location to store the files
set HDD size, store as single file
finish

If you check the newly created VM settings, the HDD is set for IDE mode, my laptop has 2 drives, one 256gb SSD for the OS and another 500gb sata for storage,..I put the VM's in the 500gb drive, but there shouldnt be any changes needed to store it on the SSD..I did for a while without problem.
 
Yeah, you're not quite doing it right. There's no dual booting - a VM is a set of files that are run by a program (player, in this case), so your questions are nonsensical.

Effectively, it's a completely virtual PC - it uses the VM hardware (Generally a virtualized PII on 440BX board, with some goofy sound card / etc), instead of your physical hardware. :) That make more sense?
 
You missed the point of my 'non sensical' question. Of course I know how a VM works, what isn't clear in the VMware Player documentation is how it handles an XP guest running a Sata SSD and DVD Drive.
As XP does not natively support AHCI I wanted to know if the VMware Player installs an AHCI compatible driver or do I need to include it with the install disc. Does that make sense ??
 
As dbwillis mentioned, VMWare will not use the native drivers, it will use virtual drivers.

I've created XP VMs with VMWare Workstation and VMWare Player on SSDs w/o any "extra" steps or drivers. I've also moved thosed VMs between SSDs, traditional sata hard drives, usb external drives, eSata drives and traditional hard drive RAID0 arrays. VMs, in my experience do not care what storage medium they are on as far as drivers go.

You may consider getting a tool to virtualize your current XP partition. I've used a Paragon tool to do that a couple of times w/o any problems. I think VMWare has something to do the same.
 
mothman said:
You missed the point of my 'non sensical' question. Of course I know how a VM works, what isn't clear in the VMware Player documentation is how it handles an XP guest running a Sata SSD and DVD Drive.
As XP does not natively support AHCI I wanted to know if the VMware Player installs an AHCI compatible driver or do I need to include it with the install disc. Does that make sense ??
Click to expand...

There is no such thing as a "sata SSD and DVD drive" in a VM. It does not have access to the physical hardware.

It has a VMDK drive. It's a VMware virtual device that simulates either IDE or a BusLogic (for XP) SCSI drive, or possibly an LSI Logic SCSI drive, if you choose to slipstream those drivers; both of the former XP has built in drivers for, and will be enhanced by installing VMware tools.

The VM does not see any of your physical hardware - the drivers you're concerned with only matter to the host OS which is running Player. As far as the VM is concerned, it has a very basic drive in it and nothing else - same for the DVD/CD drive.
 
Lopoetve,

Thanks for the excellent explanation, much appreciated.
 
Thanks for the excellent explanation. Do any of the VM software's actually simulate AHCI ?
 
mothman said:
Thanks for the excellent explanation. Do any of the VM software's actually simulate AHCI ?
Click to expand...

Nope - no need. :)

Most of the emulation effort is towards SCSI - that's what the internals of the kernel work on anyway. :)
 
How 'Bout this from VirtualBox:
Serial ATA (SATA) is a newer standard introduced in 2003. Compared to IDE, it supports both much higher speeds and more devices per hard disk controller. Also, with physical hardware, devices can be added and removed while the system is running. The standard interface for SATA controllers is called Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI).

For compatibility reasons, AHCI controllers by default operate the disks attached to it in a so-called "IDE compatibility mode", unless SATA support is explicitly requested. "IDE compatibility mode" only means that the drives can be seen and operated by the computer's BIOS. Still, disks assigned to those slots will operate in full-speed AHCI mode once the guest operating system has loaded its AHCI device driver.

Like a real SATA controller, VirtualBox's virtual SATA controller operates faster and also consumes less CPU resources than the virtual IDE controller. Also, this allows you to connect up to 30 virtual hard disks to one machine instead of just three, as with the VirtualBox IDE controller (with the DVD drive already attached). Of these, the first four (numbered 0-3 in the graphical user interface) are operated in IDE compatibility mode by default.

For this reason, starting with version 3.2 and depending on the selected guest operating system, VirtualBox uses SATA as the default for newly created virtual machines. One virtual SATA controller is created by default, and the default disk that is created with a new VM is attached to this controller.

Warning
The entire SATA controller and the virtual disks attached to it (including those in IDE compatibility mode) will not be seen by operating systems that do not have device support for AHCI. In particular, there is no support for AHCI in Windows before Windows Vista, so Windows XP (even SP2) will not see such disks unless you install additional drivers. It is possible to switch from IDE to SATA after installation by installing the SATA drivers and changing the controller type in the VM settings dialog.[22]
To add a SATA controller to a machine for which it has not been enabled by default (either because it was created by an earlier version of VirtualBox, or because SATA is not supported by default by the selected guest operating system), go to the "Storage" page of the
 
Heh, I only know the VMware side (given everything) ;)

All the VMware software works on SCSI - all internal commands (for every OS, and every product) are SCSI based, and translated to IDE if needed. :) We don't even emulate a SATA controller - it's SCSI, or IDE. SCSI >>>>> SATA >>>>>>>>>>>>>...>>> IDE. So aim for the best, and then the most compatible (IDE - everything has an IDE driver of some kind).
 
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