So, I had a Dell laptop die on me in the middle of a prolonged business trip to Fiji. Dell apparently supply 24hr collect and return guarantee on these laptops but Dell was quite useless and unable to provide me with a number I could call from Fiji. Fast forward four weeks later and I'm home. I'm due to drop the Dell off to our IT dept in the morning and will hopefully get it back in the new year.

Now, the reason for the preamble above: Assuming I can get the hard disk out of the Dell and into USB enclosure for SATA hard disks...... Can I use the information on that hard disk to create a VM to run on my MacBook (i.e. using Parallels or VMWare)? Or do I actually need a Dell laptop that actually works before I can do this? Also, as I rather foolishly bought a MacBook with the smaller (150GB) hard disk, would such a VM happily run off a small USB or Firewire portable disk?

My thinking is, I have to go back to Fiji on the week beginning Jauary 5th and, if my Dell isn't back by then, I could at least take the MacBook + Dell VM out with me....

Im not exactly sure what you are asking. But I can tell you some of what we do with virtualisation. We use it a lot, and are using it more and more. You can make an XP virtual machine on your MacBook. You can then transfer any files you have to it. We use VMWare Fusion for virtualisation. In terms of applications, you will have to reinstall them on your virtual machine. But it really is just like using an XP machine, but it is within a window on the Mac (although VMWare has a nice full screen mode as well). I suspect that if you have the Dell in a situation where you could clone it, that clone could be on the XP virtual machine on your MacBook. I dont know about running it on an external drive, I havent tried that.

both vmware and parallels have the ability to import an existing pc into a virtual guest image. however, you may need to reactivate windows and other software. if the dell still works, you won't need to remove the hard drive - the import works via the network. you don't say how large the drive in the dell is or more importantly, how much space is actually used on it, but i would imagine that 150 gig should be more than enough for osx and a guest image of windows and whatever apps you need to use. if not, changing a hard drive on a macbook is very easy.

it should work fine.

You'll almost certainly need to reactivate Windows after bringing it into the VM--it's going to see truly massive hardware changes as *EVERYTHING* will have been replaced.

I wouldn't run a VM from an external drive--it's going to be *SLOW*. Note, also, that the disk images for VM's are just as big as the disks they replace although they can be demand-allocated (this causes a performance penalty).

I've never tried to do anything other than use an image built within the VM so I can't comment on how an import goes.

My experience is somewhat different, after having built close to 100 VM images for various labs, seminars, operations, etc...

Second disk has always improved performance, even if it's just a USB 2.0 case running a 7200rpm 2.5" IDE disk. VMs are heavy on storage IO hitting both the VM's own disk files and the host bits. Storage isolation is a necessity for performance. Most laptops come with cheapo 5200rpm IDE or SATA drives so you're getting barely 70-80IOPS sustained. That burns up in a heartbeat when you have a VM running on the same disk as your host.

The total size of my VM virtual disks (or disk) is smaller than bare metal installations for Windows because we always turn off recovery for any/all VM drives. It's a waste of time for recovery purposes, wastes disk space and can affect performance when Windows pages (and it will regardless of how much RAM you have).

Demand allocated or dynamic disks are an absolute no-no if you care about performance. Used a fixed size disk and pre-allocate right from the start.

Here's what I would recommend to do (I did this before for my Laptop). Assuming your HD is still alive, try to get your hands on a same product Dell (your IT dept probably has one, or use one of a co-worker).

Place your HD into the new Dell, install VMware Converter on your Laptop. This will let you create an exact image of your HD and creates a VM.
Run the VM on your Macbook.

This will work, most probably even without having to reactivate Windows. Couple of things you may want to check before running the VM on the Mac:
- change the memory allocation so it fits your Mac
- try and uninstall any unnecessary software from your VM, to safe on space

Now if you can not get your hands on a same product Dell, you can also create a VM image from your HD drive, if you can connect it to another box. VMware Converter is a great tool for that.

Good luck! ^

If you want to go Mac, then to a large extent you just need the data off of your Dell drive, and to do a separate installation of VMware Fusion or Parallels. As others have pointed out, you then need to do an installation of Windows on the Mac. You can then run Windows in a window on the Mac for times you need it.

What you should do is to create a separate folder (directory) on the Mac to contain the files you created (that is, not the system or program files) from the PC. You can then set it up to get at this directory from both Mac and Windows. Especially if you install Microsoft Office for the Mac on the machine, you'll be able to get at most of your files in Mac mode and you'll get better performance that way. For those remaining things that you need Windows for, you can boot up Windows in Parallels or Fusion. However, you may find over time that you do this less and less frequently.

I suspect that you can make an appointment at an Apple store to have them show you how to do this. There are also data recovery services that can get your data from the Dell's drive onto a portable USB drive if you have no other options.

Our IT dept wasn't too keen on me resurrecting the Dead Dell into a new post physical existence on my MacBook. What I think I'll do is having a go at virtualising the Vista laptop that I bought as a temporary measure while I was out there, more as a learning exercise than anything else....

Luckily, they do think they can get the data off the disk so at least I'll have that for some proper continuity when I travel back out to my customer in January.

Suggest you have your IT department modify their standard configurations so that all laptop harddrives are partitioned into 2 separate logical drives (aka partitions). All application binaries are installed into C:\ as usual and all user data files, including environment settings into D:\ (or whatever drive letter your IT chooses). This makes for easier maintenance and transfers (like your current situation where you need to move your data to another machine). Also a lot easier to do personal backups - don't count on IT departments to cover all bases.

Currently waiting confirmation that they recovered my data partition.