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Mounting VMware VMDK Disks in Ubuntu (Linux)

Took me a while to find the info on this, but it's fairly simple once you piece together all the information out there. First off, I'm not converting this to VirtualBox. I'm simply accessing the HD as though it were mounted on my local file system (Ubuntu). The VMDK image is for a WinXP virtual machine.

First off, verify you have vmware-mount on your system. Drop to terminal, type "vmware-mount". You should get info regarding usage. If not, you need to install VMware Server or VMware Workstation (it's bundled with them). When prompted during the install, say 'Yes' to installing the additional tools packages. Not sure which one it's in, but it's there. Sorry, perhaps someone else can clarify this point.

Next, navigate to the location of your VMDK and type "vmware-mount -p .vmdk". This will show you a list of mount points within the file (first column).

Create /mnt/ using "mkdir /mnt/"

Next, type "sudo vmware-mount .vmdk <# found in column 1> /mnt/"

You can now navigate to that folder and browse/copy the contents of the VMDK elsewhere.

When you're done, just type "vmware-mount -d /mnt/" to release the mount safely.
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