How to Share Partitions Between Host and Guest in VMware Player
Information The original idea for this tutorial came from Horace (Hopachi). I only made the pictures, added some text and put it all together. Credits should go to Hopachi.
This tutorial shows you how to share partitions between a VMware Player host OS and a guest OS. This may be useful when you want to share e.g. a Data Partition. The methods shown below have been tested with Windows and Linux as guest Operating Systems.
Be aware that a shared partition is unavailable for the host OS when the guest OS is active. But as soon as you shut the guest OS down, the partition reverts to the host OS.
I would not recommend to share a whole disk drive (in #9) - especially not when that drive contains your host OS. When the guest OS is active, your host OS would not function.
I am showing two methods to accomplish the sharing. Just follow the numbers in the pictures after you have started your VMware Player. The last section shows how to unshare a shared partition.
Method 1
Note: 1. Step 3 is not really required. I added it for clarity. It can be omitted.
2. If you click NO to the UAC prompt, it will not allow us to use the advanced option from step 6
Method 2
Unshare
To revoke the sharing is quite simple. Follow the numbers in the pictures and when you are done with #5, play your virtual machine. The shared partition should no more show up. It should show in the host system.
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