On Sat, Mar 21, 2015 at 01:50:46AM +0800, Emmanuel Noobadmin wrote: > Running > 3.18.9-200.fc21.x86_64 > qemu 2:2.1.3-3.fc21 > libvirt 1.2.9.2-1.fc21 > System is a Thinkpad X250 with Intel i7-5600u Broadwell GT2 > > I'm trying to replace the Win7 installation on my laptop with Fedora > 21 and virtualizing Windows 7 for work purposes. I'd prefer to give > the guest its own NTFS partition instead of using a file for both > performance and ease of potential recovery. > > So I've set aside unpartitioned space on the hard disk and added > /dev/sda to the virt-manager storage pool, created a new volume and > assigned it to the guest as an IDE drive. Unfortunately, the Windows 7 > installer does not see this drive despite being "IDE" and not virtio. > If I use a qcow2 file as the drive, the installer has no problems > detecting it. > > To eliminate virt-manager from the equation, I've also tried to do a > very basic install using virt-install with similar results, the > physical partition cannot be detected regardless of bus type > (IDE/SATA/virtio) even with the signed Redhat virtio drivers loaded by > the installer. > > I was unable to find any similar issues or solutions online except a 2 > year old thread on linuxquestions which quoted that we must specify > the whole disk instead of a partition. However, I cannot find the > source of that quote. > http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-virtualization-and-cloud-90/qemu-kvm-on-a-real-partition-947162/ > > Is this really the case and the reason why Windows 7 cannot see the > physical partition or there is something else I am doing wrong? I have CCed the libvirt mailing list, since KVM is a component here but your question seems to be mainly about libvirt, virt-manager, virt-install, etc. It sounds like you want an NTFS partition on /dev/sda. That requires passing the whole /dev/sda drive to the guest - and the Windows installer might overwrite your GRUB Master Boot Record. Be careful when trying to do this. Also keep in mind that the virtual machine's hardware and your physical hardware are probably quiet different (different chipsets, PCI devices, etc). Windows might not be happy booting on the physical host if it was installed under KVM, and vice versa. This is known as physical-to-virtual (p2v) migration and means some tweaks or driver installs may be necessary to make Windows run after switching. Stefan
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