A virtual machine may have up to four IDE drives. These may be virtual hard disks or CD-ROMs.

For each VM you must define at least one hard disk drive or one floppy drive. If you do not define a hard drive you must always power on that virtual machine using a bootable floppy disk.

You must define the first IDE drive before you can define any of the other drives. By convention, the third drive is often (but need not be) used for a CD-ROM device.

You can delete disks using the VM configuration editor, subject to some restrictions.

You must identify at least one hard drive for a VM.

To add a hard disk drive file:

1. Open the VM configuration editor.
2. Click the expansion button to the left of IDE drives.

You will see a list of four IDE drives identified using the IDE convention P-M (Primary-Master), P-S (Primary-Slave), and so on. If you have not yet installed a drive, each entry is followed by the phrase Not Installed.

3. Click the IDE drive that you wish to define or modify.
4. If you are adding the first hard disk, click the first entry. The right side of the panel refreshes to display IDE drive options.Choose a device type.

You can use any device type with any of the four devices. One convention is to use the first IDE drive as a hard drive and the third IDE drive as a CD-ROM. However, you can map any drive as a hard disk or a CD-ROM.

5. Choose a disk mode.

The default disk mode is persistent. This simply means that all changes are written to the disk as they are made; the disk is treated just as a conventional disk. The other two disk modes allow you to control when and if changes are applied. (See "The Disk Modes" for an explanation of the three disk modes.) When determining space requirements for the disk, all three modes require approximately the same amount of space.

6. Enter a name for the disk.

Enter the path and name for a new host operating system file to be used as a hard drive for the VM. (This file is referred to as a virtual disk file.) Use the Choose button to browse for a file. For example:

/tmp/test1/test1disk

7. In the Capacity field, specify the maximum size for the disk file.

The default size of a virtual disk file is 500 megabytes. You may wish to increase this size, particularly if you will install many applications on the VM.

Carefully estimate the size for each disk. You cannot change the size after the virtual disk file is created. While you want a disk to be large enough to meet your requirements you also do not want to waste space.

This disk should be large enough to contain the guest operating system and any applications and data that you will need on the guest operating system. No additional disk space is required as overhead by VMware application.

The only adjustment you can make to disk space is to increase the total disk space for a VM by adding another disk. You cannot reduce disk space. See "Managing Disk Space" for more information.

8. Click Create.

The virtual disk file must exist when you first start the machine. If you have entered the name of a new file, you must click Create so VMware can create the virtual disk file. If you specify an virtual disk file that was previously created (or you have copied one) you do not need to click create.

9. Click Install.

The entry changes from Not Installed to Hard Drive.

10. Exit the VM configuration editor by clicking OK, or continue to add or modify another feature.

You can add a CD-ROM using the VM configuration editor. Although you can use any of the IDE drives, the third drive is used by convention.

To add a CD-ROM:

1. Open the VM configuration editor.
2. Click the expansion button to the left of IDE Drives. Click one of the entries below IDE Drives. Choose CD-ROM for the device type.
3. Enter the path to the CD-ROM. For example:

/dev/cdrom

4. Click Install.

The corresponding entry below IDE Drives changes from Not Installed to CD-ROM.

5. Exit the VM configuration editor by clicking OK, or continue to add or modify another feature.