Importing older disk images

[ashleyshepherd]

Evening All,
First post, getting back into VMS after a few years off!
Apart from the fact that I am finding installation a right b@lls ache (I'll get there, but the docs seem less than complete) on ESXi 7, I'm also wondering if I can import/mount SATA disks (installed in a SCSI RAID box as JBOD - used with old VAX and Alpha systems) formatted as ODS2 (I think) from my old Alpha VMS systems (I would remove the disks from the RAID case and plug them in directly somehow as nothing supports SCSI any more ), or I have a disk image from my use of FreeAXP. Can I import that image?
Sorry for all the questions, but I realised that once I get the VMS system installed and running, I want to get the 40 years of work off my old disks.
Just a thought. Not sure if anyone has attempted anything like this

[snadow]

If you can get an old disk to be "visible" to the host system, it should be usable by the VMS guest operating system; when you configure your VMS virtual machine, see if you can assign the old disk as one of the VMS virtual disks. And yes, ODS-2 will work fine. Your old FreeAXP disk image will be fine too, you can definitely assign it to a virtual machine disk.

[ashleyshepherd]

Well,
having managed to get a full VMS system and also a community licenced system running, there seems to be no way to get VMware to add a .img file as a disk, so I guess all my 40 years of work is lost. Unless I can either get another freeAXP system working or I buy an alpha system....

[cct]

You need something to convert the .img file into an ISO. I think it is likely VMWare has a utility that will do that

[arne_v]

To try and read the disk image yourself you could try VMWare Player instead of ESXi.

Bot otherwise for both physical disks and images, then maybe you could get the disks to someone that could mount them and create a backup saveset for you??

[sms]

Code: Select all

> [...] there seems to be no way to get VMware to add a .img file as a
> disk, [...]

   I know nothing, but my dim recollection is that you could tell SIMH
that almost anything was a disk image, and you had some chance of it
working.  I believe that I routinely did that with old Hobbyist PAK DCL
scripts.  Then MOUNT /FOREIGN, and copy the "disk" to a file.  After a
little attribute setting and trimming off the trailing NULs, I had a
working DCL script.  Perhaps a SIMH simulated VAX could cope with a real
(ODS2) disk image.

   I also believe that I tried to do something similar with VMware
Fusion (Settings > Add Device... > New CD/DVD Drive [...]) but if I
specified an "ISO" file, it seemed to expect to recognize the
(ISO-9660?) file system, and it didn't.  I might also have tried New
Hard Disk, but I believe that I had some kind of trouble with that, too.

   If I were desperate, I might move a disk image file to VMS-VM
storage, and then try to use LD to get VMS to treat it as a disk.  I'd
expect that to work as well for ODS2 or ODS5.

   With enough virtuals piled up, you'd think that practically anything
could be forced to work.

[martinv]

I have a disk image from my use of FreeAXP. Can I import that image?

I imported a data disk from VirtualBox by specifying a raw disk to VMware Workstation Player (and Workstation Pro, now that it's free for personal use). It's some manual work to setup, and always wants admin privileges at startup (which I deny it, as they're not needed - probably meant for access to physical devices).

1. Create a VMDK text file, DATA1.vmdk in my case, for the disk image in the VM folder with content (DATA1.disk being the image filename):

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# Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
CID=10ee2fdb
parentCID=ffffffff
createType="fullDevice"

# Extent description
RW 2940952 FLAT ".\DATA1.disk" 0

# The Disk Data Base 
#DDB

ddb.adapterType = "ide"
ddb.encoding = "windows-1252"
ddb.geometry.cylinders = "2917"
ddb.geometry.heads = "16"
ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
ddb.longContentID = "995ce872e60881a701b944f810ee2fdb"
ddb.uuid.image = "87b759d5-551b-4538-abbe-12b217386117"
ddb.uuid.modification = "7134e75c-55b2-4d79-959d-8e15dd495a58"
ddb.uuid.parent = "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
ddb.uuid.parentmodification = "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
ddb.virtualHWVersion = "4"

2. Edit the VM's VMX file and add the disk with

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sata0:1.deviceType = "rawDisk"
sata0:1.fileName = "DATA1.vmdk"
sata0:1.present = "TRUE"
sata0:1.redo = ""

HTH,
Martin

P.S.: I deliberately did not try to convert the image file, as I intend to still use it with VirtualBox.