SCSI disks not recognized by Windows XP.
Remembering long years ago, when I wanted to install Windows XP on my new laptop and the setup program told me that there wouldn't be any hard disk! Somewhat bizarre that Windows NT has problems with neither IDE nor SCSI disks, that Windows 2000, too, (at least in theory) supports both types, and then, the more recent XP, having no drivers included for SCSI! Not entirely true, because this issue only concerns Windows XP 32bit.
Fortunately, at the beginning of the installation process, the Windows XP setup programs gives the possibility to include SCSI drivers. This was usually done by using a floppy diskette containing the driver that you got with your computer. Not sure, if the driver must be on a floppy or if you can load it from some other media. I think that my laptop at that time hadn't any floppy drive, and that I had to use a floppy connected to the USB port (all necessary conversions being automatically handled by the BIOS).
If you create a Windows XP VMware virtual machine, the default disk type is IDE. If for any reason, you want to use SCSI disks, you'll have to include the SCSI driver the same way as you would on a physical machine. No problem concerning the floppy drive, that you can add to your VM when creating it. And concerning the driver, the VMware documentation says: "To use SCSI hard disks in a 32-bit Windows XP virtual machine, you must download a special SCSI driver from the VMware Web site. Follow the instructions on the Web site to use the driver with a fresh installation of Windows XP.".
If you find this text helpful, please, support me and this website by signing my guestbook.