How to Configure the Floppy Drive for a Virtual Machine

Article
01/17/2008

You can configure the virtual floppy drive that is already built in to the Virtual Machine Manager hardware profile for any virtual machine or template when you create or modify the hardware profile. These settings specify the virtual floppy drive settings that you want to allocate for virtual machines configured to use this hardware profile.

Depending on which option you choose, the virtual floppy drive can read a physical floppy disk inserted into the physical floppy drive on the host; or it can read a virtual floppy disk file (.vfd file) stored in the library. You cannot remove this floppy drive or add any additional floppy drives.

Before You Start

The following procedure assumes one of the following:

You are creating a new stand-alone hardware profile and are configuring the Hardware Settings tab.
You are configuring hardware profile settings on the Configure Hardware page of the New Template Wizard or the New Virtual Machine Wizard.
You are configuring the properties of an existing stand-alone hardware profile on its Hardware Settings tab or are configuring an existing template or virtual machine on the Hardware Configuration tab.

To configure virtual floppy drive settings for a virtual machine

In the left pane, under Hardware Profile, click Floppy Drive and then either accept the default settings or modify virtual floppy drive settings by selecting one of the following options:

No media(default). Select this option to specify that the virtual floppy drive cannot read either a physical floppy disk or a virtual floppy disk. You can change this setting later.

If you are modifying an existing hardware profile, you can select No Media to disconnect a virtual floppy drive from the host drive or from a virtual floppy disk file to which it was connected earlier.

Physical floppy drive. If you want to connect the virtual floppy drive to a physical floppy drive on the host, select this option and then select a drive letter from the drop-down list box. This option enables the virtual floppy drive on the virtual machine to read a physical floppy disk in the specified physical floppy drive on the host.

Known floppy disk. Select this option if you want to enable the virtual floppy drive on a virtual machine to access a specific virtual floppy disk (.vfd) file that is stored in a library share on a Virtual Machine Manager library server. Click Browse to open the Select virtual floppy disk dialog box, and then select the virtual floppy disk that you want to use.

If the Virtual Machine Manager library contains a large number of virtual floppy disks, after you click Browse, you can filter the displayed list of virtual floppy disk files from which to choose by using the following fields:

Library group:

If the library has more than one library group, you can use the Library group field to select a specific library group so that you can view only virtual floppy disks in that library group and then select the one you want.

Look for:

If your library contains many virtual floppy disks, you can type all or part of the name of a virtual floppy disk in this field. For example, if your library contains a virtual floppy disk named BootFloppy1, you can type BootFloppy1 in the Look for field to display only that disk. Alternatively, if your library contains a set of virtual floppy disks with similar names (such as BootFloppy1, BootFloppy2, and BootFloppy3), you can type BootFloppy to display all three disks and then select the one you want.

Group by:

If your library contains a large number of virtual floppy disks, you can select Type, Owner, or Operating System from the Group by drop-down list box to sort the list of virtual floppy disks by one of those categories.

After you select the virtual floppy disk that you want to use, click OK to close the Select virtual floppy disk dialog box.
To save the settings, do one of the following:

Option 1: If this hardware profile is a new or existing stand-alone hardware profile, click Apply to save the settings.

Option 2: If this hardware profile is on the Configure Hardware page in the New Virtual Machine Wizard or the New Template Wizard (and you have completed any other settings you want to configure on this hardware profile), click Next to save the settings and continue to the next page. Alternatively, to save your settings not only in this wizard but also as a stand-alone profile, click Save Profile, type a name in the Name field on the General tab (and, optionally, change any other settings); click Apply, click OK to return to the Configure Hardware page; click Next to continue to the next wizard page, and then complete the wizard as usual.

Option 3: If this hardware profile is on the properties page of an existing virtual machine or template, click Apply to save the settings.

How to Configure the Floppy Drive for a Virtual Machine

Before You Start

See Also

Concepts

Additional resources