I would like to make some vhd or vhdx in one SSD USB instead of having three USB harddisk. vhd1-win-XP vhd2-win-7 vhd3-mac-osx vhd4-win10 I've posted here because the most problematic one on new hardare is XP for this reason i'm following the thread XP2ESD, for Mac i dont need lastest problematic version for me is ok Snow Leopard 10.6 Any help will be apreciated, thanks
Proper native vhd is there since Win7 (vhd only, lower end SKUs not supported) Server2008R2, also ThinPC works but has a buggy driver that must be disabled. XP and Vista aren't supported at all, but you can reach the same functionality using grub4dos and the SVbus driver. You need a fixed size VHD (not dinamically expanding) that file must be not fragmented (use the single file defrag application wcontig.exe) There are many tutorials on rebootpro about the procedure both to use the VHD itself, or to copy it in RAM at boot and get a blazingly fast OS. Just google for XP + grub4dos + SVbus No idea about macos, when I feel masochist I just use vmware to run it.
Booting WinXP from the virtual disk file will not solve the problems with modern hardware - ACPI, AHCI, NVMe, USB3. If the motherboard is UEFI class 3 (pure UEFI without CSM in bios), you do not boot WinXP 32-bit WinXP 64-bit - this one can be booting - look at the links in my signature
They are two separate problems, better if not mixed together. Franky I think that you complicated your life a lot, because you are stuck with concepts of the past. Just use dism, hyperv and vhd, instead of vmware and the pointless macrium and your tutorial will be way shorter. Even if you want to use VMware, just use vhds not vmdks, to reduce the steps involved.
@acer-5100 On the forum I only provide the sysprep version, while for myself I captured .vmdk to install.wim and made ISO 670MB based on XP2ESD so I don't need Macrium, VMware or dism anymore P.S. wimlib is better than dism to capture.