Boot Camp virtual machine and the virtual machine stored on ExFAT partition cannot be powered on at the same time

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor

Issue/Introduction

This article provides information on how to access a Boot Camp virtual machine and the virtual machine stored on ExFAT partition at the same time on a Mac. 

Symptoms:

• On a Mac machine which has 3 partitions: macOS partition, Boot Camp partition and an ExFAT formatted partition, Boot Camp virtual machine and the virtual machine stored on the ExFAT partition cannot be powered on at the same time.
• If you power on Boot Camp virtual machine first, the virtual machine stored on the ExFAT partition cannot be powered on as the ExFAT partition is unmounted automatically.
• If you power on a virtual machine stored on the ExFAT partition first, the following attempt to power on Boot Camp virtual machine will fail.

Environment

VMware Fusion 11.x
VMware Fusion Pro 11.x
VMware Fusion 8.x
VMware Fusion 10.x
VMware Fusion Pro 8.x
VMware Fusion Pro 10.x

Cause

• When Boot Camp virtual machine powers on, for all Windows-visible partitions existing on the Mac, Boot Camp virtual machine considers they are part of the virtual machine and tries to mount them.
• When Boot Camp partition is powered on first, it will unmount those partitions from macOS in order to mount them inside Windows OS.
• When the virtual machine stored on the ExFAT partition is powered on first, the following attempt to power on Boot Camp virtual machine fails because Boot Camp virtual machine fails to unmount the ExFAT partition from macOS. 

Resolution

To resolve this issue :

1. Quit Fusion.
2. In Finder, navigate to "~/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines/Boot Camp"
   folder.
3. Find the "Boot Camp.vmdk" file.
4. Back up "Boot Camp.vmdk" file.
5. Open "Boot Camp.vmdk" file with TextEdit or any other text editor.

The lines for the partitions that are unmounted and given to Boot Camp virtual machine look like:
RW 177139712 FLAT "/dev/disk0s4" 0 partitionUUID @partition:diskModel=APPLE|20SSD|20SM1024F,diskSize=1000555581440,partSize=90695532544,partOffset=909859880960,partMediaUUID=9EC3A387-5AA1-4145-AD75-E150825E3298,partVolumeUUID=6A40AC2E-B9A2-4289-A6E9-D29EDD26ACBF
The lines for the partitions that remain mounted to macOS look like :
RW 1269536 ZERO

6. ​Find the line indicating the ExFAT partition that should not be assigned to Boot Camp virtual machine.
7. Replace the "FLAT" and all that follows with "ZERO" 

Example : RW 177139712 ZERO

8. Save the changes made to "Boot Camp.vmdk" file.