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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 host or as floppy images. However, a floppy drive can be used only by the host 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 console.

To add a floppy drive to a virtual machine:

  1. Select File > Open and open the virtual machine configuration file (.cfg) you want to modify.
  2. Select Settings > Configuration Editor from the console.
  3. Click the + sign next to Floppy Drives.
  4. Select a device node where you want to create a virtual floppy drive.
  5. From the Type field, make a selection:
  6. In the Path field, enter the location of the floppy drive. For example, enter /dev/fd0 or /dev/fd1.
  7. If you want the virtual floppy drive to automatically connect to its physical drive or image file when the virtual machine powers on, select the floppy drive from the list of devices and select the Start Connected option that appears in the right panel.
  8. Click OK.

Note: VMware GSX 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 host operating system, 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 host machine.

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