VM Ware and multipartition windows installation disk [install larger than 4 gigs]

I am in the middle of building a Windows install disk that has 3 partitions Boot, sources and apps. on the first partition will be the files that make the Drive Bootable, 2nd Partition the Sources install. Wim and the like and apps mostly freeware apps. now I would like to test the said disk on vmware workstation, how do I mimic the partitions so it has the drive letters c,d and e? I will have batch files on the e drive to store the batch files. JTM

The straightforward method is to build your USB drive as intended, and then add the physical USB drive to your VM so it can be used for booting.


Drive letters during install aren't guaranteed to be fixed. You should script something to search the available drives for a known marker (like a file or foldername), and determine the current drive letters.

One method to get past the 4GB limitation for install WIM (ESD), is to split the WIM. Splitting a WIM means chopping it into smaller chunks and Setup detects there's multiple file instances.
Split a Windows image file (.wim) to span across multiple DVDs

garlin said:

One method to get past the 4GB limitation for install WIM (ESD), is to split the WIM.

Click to expand...

This is my method of choice. You end up with a perfectly standard Fat32 install USB that works like any other, except that instead of a single install.wim it has several install.swm files.