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Enabling a Floppy Drive from a Virtual Machine

You can configure up to two 1.44MB floppy devices. Drives can be available on the server or as floppy images. However, a floppy drive can be used only by the server's console operating system or by one virtual machine at a time. If you run more than one virtual machine simultaneously, you may wish to select which one (if any) has access to the drive. To disable or enable access to a floppy drive while a virtual machine is running, select the floppy drive from the Devices menu in the remote console or use the VMware Management Interface.

To enable a floppy drive:

  1. Select File > Open and open the virtual machine configuration file (.cfg) you want to modify.
  2. Select Settings > Configuration Editor from the remote console.
  3. Click the + sign next to Floppy Drives.
  4. Select a device node where you want to create a virtual floppy drive.
  5. Make a selection:
  6. In the Path field, enter the location of the floppy drive. For example, enter /dev/fd0 or /dev/fd1.
  7. Click OK.

Note: VMware ESX Server does not currently support Imation SuperDisk LS120 120MB floppy disk drives within a virtual machine — either as a standard floppy drive or as an LS120 drive. These drives can continue to be used on the server, but cannot be used within a virtual machine.

Systems that only have SuperDisk floppy drives are not able to install guest operating systems that require booting from a floppy disk. One workaround is to install guest operating systems from bootable CD-ROMs. Another workaround is to add an additional conventional floppy disk drive to the server machine.

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