Is there any way to create a Windows VM but have an Unraid share show up in it as a 'physical' hard drive?

[takkischitt]

I'm wanting to create a Windows VM that has an Unraid share showing as a 'physical' hard drive (not a network location/drive etc) so I can use Google Backup & Sync within the Windows VM to backup some folders in the share to the computer backup part of Google Drive (not the Google Drive folder). Is this possible?

[JonathanM]

Short answer, no.

 

Long answer, you can allocate space (vdisk) on an array drive or pool that can be seen as a physical drive to the VM, but the content won't be accessible through Unraid. 

[ghost82]

Another workaround could be create a folder simlink on C:\ physical drive pointing to a folder on the network drive.

It worked for me with installers requiring a physical disk, I pointed them on C:\foldersimlink and the content was written on the network drive.

[takkischitt]

11 minutes ago, ghost82 said:

Another workaround could be create a folder simlink on C:\ physical drive pointing to a folder on the network drive.

It worked for me with installers requiring a physical disk, I pointed them on C:\foldersimlink and the content was written on the network drive.

 

Is this what you're referring to? https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/

[JonathanM]

The symlink solution works depending on how thoroughly the program checks for network vs. local media. YMMV on whether or not a specific app will be happy with it.

[ghost82]

if I remember well, I used this cmd command on windows as admin:

mklink /D C:\Games \\192.168.2.1\6TB\Games

where C:\Games is the folder symlink, 192.168.2.1 is my smb server and 6TB\Games is the path on the network drive where stuff goes into.

As Jonathan said it may work or not.

[graviz_nl]

If symlink doesn't do the trick, you could look into setting up an iSCSI target... there's some topics about this on this forum