Uwe Sieber wrote :
>>> And VMWARE should just dismount the accessed volumes and
>>> warn you if this fails.
>> Nice but there is a detail which you (maybe) overlooked and
>> which may be important : my VM is /not/ mounting one or more
>> individual raw partitions ("volumes" in your and MS's
>> terminology), rather it's set up to access the whole hard
disk
>> ("raw" disk in VMware parlance). In other words, VMware
accesses
>> not files, but sectors - so the question arises again, is
that
>> secure ?
> It is safe only if all volumes on this disk have been locked
and
> dismounted, otherwise write access is unsafe. Therefore I'm
sure
> that VM does lock and dismount all volumes on disk it intends
to
> write to.
No I'm sorry, it will /not/ lock or dismount anything in the
host. This is the whole point of raw disks.
>>> VMWARE should complain then when it tries to dismount the
>>> volume.
>> As said above, VMware is /not/ told to mount any /volume/, so
I
>> can't see things happenning this way.
>
> Then what is the raw access good for other than finding
partitions
> with file systems and mount them?
We must make clear distinctions here. Using raw access, VMware
does not look for, dismount, mount or access any partitions
using the host OS or otherwise; guest systems, booted inside a
VM, on the other hand /will/ likely mount look for, mount and
access any partitions that they are set to recognise.
It's up to the user, to set 'things' up both in the host and the
guests so that no conflicts can arise. It can be hairy, but I've
been playing this kind of game for over 10 years with zero
problem (crossing fingers)...
Back to the point : since removing all drive letters from the
partition in question is not enough, as you have pointed out, at
least in theory... is there a way to tell Windows XP to leave a
partition /really/ alone ?
--
NimbUs