Have 10.13.3/Win10 dual booting from separate SSDs -- now virtualization?

[miked378]

Hi everyone--

First post for me! By following the great guides on the site, I've put together an i5-8600K machine, dual-booting 10.13.3 and Win 10 from separate SSDs (no Bootcamp, just a normal installation of Win10), and things are about 95% functional. I'm looking for a way that will allow me to run my Win10 installation virtually within OS X. My dream would be to have the VM running on another Space, and be able to switch nicely between them.

The options I've seen are Parallels, Fusion, and VirtualBox. It seems like the "Coherence" feature of Parallels is closest to what I'm imagining, but $80 per year seems pretty steep. Fusion is a one-time charge, and VirtualBox is free, but not sure whether these offer the type of experience I'm looking for.

Any suggestions or experiences from others would be very helpful! Thanks!

 

[miked378]

In case this is helpful to anyone else, I got this working, and it was pretty easy.

1. Download a trial of VMWare Fusion 30-day trial here: https://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/fusion-evaluation.html
2. Install, and start the application
3. In the "Select the Installation Method" window, choose "Install from Boot Camp," even if you just installed Windows normally to a different SSD like I did
4. In my case, the next window that showed up was called "Choose a Boot Camp Volume," and allowed me to choose my Windows installation. In the radio buttons beneath, choose, "Create a Boot Camp Virtual Machine." The text below this reads, "VMWare Fusion will create a virtual machine that uses your Boot Camp volume directly." Bingo!
5. Hit Continue
6. In about 2 minutes, you'll have a VM that boots into your Windows installation. It really was that easy. A quick note -- not sure how the key mapping works, since I had already mapped my Cmd and Opt keys to Alt and Win, respectively, using SharpKeys in Windows (https://github.com/randyrants/sharpkeys). So they work in the VM just fine, but I'm not sure whether this step is necessary or not.

Best of luck!