| English | Japanese | Author: Ken Kato Mail: chitchat<DOT>vdk<AT>gmail<DOT>com |
[UPDATED: 6, Apr. 2005] The current latest version is 3.2 (See details).
This is a Virtual Disk Driver (VDK) Version 3 for Windows NT / 2000 / XP.
I've got some reports that it also works on Windows 2003 Server.
Note !!! works only on 32 bit systems !!!
With VDK you can mount a VMware virtual disk to your Windows hosts and use them as another disk drive attached to your system.
VDK can open the following disk types for both read-only and read-write access:
VDK can also open the following types of virtual disks:
VDK is also capable of creating REDO log files which VMware can use. This means that VDK can open virtual disks in undoable mode, then you can commit the changes using VMware, or discard the changes by simply deleting created REDO log files.
VDK cannot use the following virtual disks for the time being, but I'm planning to implement them:
VDK cannot use the following disk types, and I have no intention of implementing them:
Version 3.2 is a minor command line interface update:
VDK owes a great deal to Bo Brant駭's 'ntifs' project and 'filedisk' program (http://www.acc.umu.se/~bosse/). This program simply could not happen without his great works.
Some users have reported gradual system slowdown and eventual lockup when transferring large amount of data from/to virtual drives. Cser Laszlo has investigated the issue further and reported that this happens only when an image is opened in Read-Write or Write-Blocked mode, and does not happen in Read-Only mode. I suspect it has something to do with Windows' cache management, but I haven't experienced the problem myself and I have no solution for the problem at the moment.
The VMware virtual disk format and structure on which VDK was developed is entirely the result of my personal investigation. Absolutely no official information is provided by VMware, Inc. or any other resources. Please be aware that there is ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY and be sure to use it AT YOUR OWN RISK.
You must have administrative privileges to use the VDK. This is becuase Windows does not allow non-administrative users to manipulate hard disk volumes.
VDK is a disk driver, not a file system driver, therefore you can only access partitions which your Windows host can recognize. For example, you cannot access ext2 partitions on virtual drives unless you have a 3rd party ext2 file system driver installed on your Windows system.
VDK does not communicate with Windows 2000/XP Mount Manager.
Therefore:
VDK does not handle GPT partitioned disk (I don't really know what it is. All I know is that it's a new type of partition table.)
Also, I suspect that you cannot use Windows NT Fault Tolerant Volumes (mirror, stripe, volume set, etc) or Windows 2000/XP Dynamic Volumes on virtual drives. I simply don't know because I've never used them.
Will appear in the next major release:
May appear someday...
| Binary: | vdk32-050406.zip | (99,636 bytes) | Apr. 6, 2005 |
| Source: | vdksrc-050406.zip | (181,897 bytes) | Apr. 6, 2005 |
The binary package includes the following files:
Please carefully read README.TXT in the package for more information.
Previous version (version 3.1):
| Binary: | vdk.zip | (98,619 bytes) | Nov. 10, 2003 |
| Source: | vdksrc.zip | (188,321 bytes) | Nov. 10, 2003 |
| 06-04-2005 | Version 3.2 (VDK.SYS 3.1, VDK.EXE 3.2) Minor command line interface updates. |
| 10-11-2003 | Version 3.1 (VDK.SYS 3.1, VDK.EXE 3.1)
|
| 04-11-2003 | Version 3.0 Release (VDK.SYS 3.0, VDK.EXE 3.0) Added support for multiple virtual drives, write-block mode, sector image file set, view image information command. |
| 30-07-2003 | Version 2.0 Release (VDK.SYS 2.0, VDK.EXE 2.0) Added support for VMware 4.0 virtual disks, simple sector image files, non-partitioned disk image files. |
| 27-05-2003 | VDK.SYS 1.01 Fixed a major bug where it couldn't handle virtual disks larger than 4GB properly. |
| 20-05-2003 | Initial Release (VDK.SYS 1.0, VDK.EXE 1.0) |