{"id":840,"date":"2011-11-10T11:43:28","date_gmt":"2011-11-09T22:43:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/?p=840"},"modified":"2011-11-10T11:43:54","modified_gmt":"2011-11-09T22:43:54","slug":"install-vmware-esxi-4-to-usb-drive-or-to-hdd-without-a-cd-drive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/install-vmware-esxi-4-to-usb-drive-or-to-hdd-without-a-cd-drive\/","title":{"rendered":"Install VMWare ESXi 4 to USB Drive, or to HDD without a CD Drive"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"8781ca4f97038dd0d58a1ad8af045721\" data-index=\"3\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\r\ngoogle_ad_client = \"ca-pub-6411751809866006\";\r\n\/* BlogHorizontalSlim *\/\r\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"6442664612\";\r\ngoogle_ad_width = 468;\r\ngoogle_ad_height = 60;\r\n\/\/-->\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\r\nsrc=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<p>So I&#8217;ve got a newish PC here that I want to setup with VMWare ESXi.<\/p>\n<p>The down side is that I can&#8217;t seem to get it to boot off a USB CD-ROM drive, and I don&#8217;t have any SATA DVD Drives handy to pop in.<\/p>\n<p>Thankfully, I&#8217;ve managed to find a relatively easy way to get ESXi installed and up and running!<\/p>\n<p>All you need is <a href=\"http:\/\/m0n0.ch\/wall\/physdiskwrite.php\" target=\"_blank\">Physdiskwrite<\/a> (Dont bother with the GUI), the ESXi ISO, and something like <a href=\"http:\/\/rarlabs.net\" target=\"_blank\">WinRAR<\/a> to extract everything.<\/p>\n<p>The whole process should only take about 3-4 minutes.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>First off, extract everything from the ISO. In my case, I&#8217;ve got ESXi 4 Update 2.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a file, image.tgz, extract that to your HDD.<\/p>\n<p>Then, you&#8217;ll have a directory structure created: <strong>image\\usr\\lib\\vmware\\installer\\<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In there you&#8217;ll have a file:\u00c2\u00a0<strong>VMware-VMvisor-big-261974-x86_64.dd.bz2<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Extract that file to somewhere on your HDD. In my case, because I was playing around with other things, I made a folder C:\\dd<\/p>\n<p>Extract Physdiskwrite to the same location<\/p>\n<p>Now, you want to open an Administrative command prompt. You may need to make a shortcut to cmd.exe and right-click on it to choose &#8220;Run as Administrator&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Change into the directory with physdiskwrite and the VMWare .dd file<\/p>\n<p>Now, run:<\/p>\n<p><strong>diskpart<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>From within the disk partitioning tool, run:<\/p>\n<p><strong>list disk<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This will show you all your drives and their drive number. In my case, I&#8217;m wanting to install VMWare to the 80GB HDD (Disk1):<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/ESX_usb.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-841\" title=\"ESX_usb\" src=\"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/ESX_usb-300x215.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"215\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/ESX_usb-300x215.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/ESX_usb.jpg 677w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Type &#8220;<strong>exit<\/strong>&#8221; to quit the disk partitioning tool<\/p>\n<p>Now, you want to use physdiskwrite to write the image to the HDD, with a command like:<\/p>\n<p><strong>physdiskwrite.exe -u -d 1 VMware-VMvisor-big-261974-x86_64.dd<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Replace the &#8220;-d 1&#8221; with your applicable Drive number that you discovered previously.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s it, you should now be able to throw that HDD into your VMWare machine, and have it boot!<\/p>\n\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So I&#8217;ve got a newish PC here that I want to setup with VMWare ESXi. The down side is that I can&#8217;t seem to get it to boot off a USB CD-ROM drive, and I don&#8217;t have any SATA DVD Drives handy to pop in. Thankfully, I&#8217;ve managed to find a relatively easy way to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[376,374,375,370,377,368],"class_list":["post-840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-tos-guides-tech-info","tag-booting","tag-cdrom","tag-dvd","tag-esxi","tag-usb","tag-vmware"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWi3e-dy","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=840"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":844,"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions\/844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}