Howto Mount NTFS VMware Virtual Disk Image (vmdk) read/write
Posted by admin on January 14th, 2008 
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Vmware server comes with a little utility to mount the VMware virtual file systems called vmware-mount.pl. This utility works pretty well but mounts all NTFS partitions as Read Only!
Outlined below is a process to mount .vmdk files Read/Write.
Requirements
vmware-loop
nbd module
ntfs-3g
Vmware-loop is provided by the free vmware server. Instructions for installing can be found HERE.The nbd (Network Block Device) module should be provided already by Ubuntu.
Install Ntfs-3g in Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install ntfs-config
This will complete the installation
Configure VMware Disk
First One is to load the nbd module
sudo modprobe nbd
Next we use vmware-loop, the “Virtual Hard Disk to Network Block Device mapper”. This is done using vmware-loop /path/to/VirtualDisk Partition# Device. For example
sudo vmware-loop /home/MrFSL/VirtualDisk.vmdk 1 /dev/nbd0
Finally we open a new terminal and mount in the usual way
sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/nbd0 /mnt/
Common Problem with Solution
Problem
If you are having permission issues you might want to adjust permissions on the mount point or device
Solution
sudo chmod 777 /mnt
sudo chmod 777 /dev/nbd0
When you are done unmount with a simple
sudo umount /dev/nbd0
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March 28th, 2008 at 1:09 am
Great!
Works perfectly
August 17th, 2008 at 2:04 am
Thank you. With these commands I was able to save data from a vmware disk image that I could no longer boot from.
Sincerely,
Tom Johnson