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I'd like to make myself a portable virtual machine for bringing my own sandboxes for development and staging on-the-go.

I'd mainly run Arch Linux and Windows Server 2008 on those.

I was thinking of bringing the image on a usb drive and simply install VMware Player on the computers I'd use it with but I was wondering is VMWare Player is allowed to write on the virtual disk or if the disk would be resetted to its initial state after each reboot?

If this is a good idea then simply tell me so, or else then could you suggest me something else please?

Thanks!

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  • Why are you worried about write permissions? Are you wanting the disk to reset its state after reboots?
    – jpaugh
    Commented Jan 23, 2012 at 4:14
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    If you have access to VMWare Workstation, check out Pocket ACE to create portable VMs on flash drives. I have not used it, but it sounds like what you want.
    – skub
    Commented Jan 23, 2012 at 4:40
  • I thought VMWare Player was only to run already created instance of an OS on a specified snapshot and that every made work was lost when rebooted but I was wrong, I'm currently experimenting with it.
    – Tommy B.
    Commented Jan 23, 2012 at 4:51
  • @skub I happen to have access to one at work, I'll check it out thanks!
    – Tommy B.
    Commented Jan 23, 2012 at 4:52

2 Answers 2

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I think its a good idea. As long as VMWare is already installed on each computer you want to use it on, it should work. Of course, you might have to adjust your configuration on each computer so that VMWare knows to check your USB stick instead of your home folder--and if youre using Windows with varying drive letters, that could be a pain. That said, I've never tried it. Let us know how it goes.

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This will work and VMware player can access the drive and make changes. I suggest USB external hard drive and not a USB flash drive. The faster the external device the better. eSATA or USB 3.0 work better.

If you want it to revert, perhaps a snapshot that you can revert to after using.

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