Fusion 11: Virtual Windows 10: copying files to shared folders very slow

[Hubert32]

Hello,

When I open Explorer with a folder in Z:\ (Shared folders), the Explorer is using up to 100% processor time.

When copying files from the C: drive to that shared folder on Z: it takes very long. After preparing the explorer finally starts to copy at a rate of 622 bytes/s up to 44 kB/s. Other apps are frozen.

I changed the virtual network card  from e1000 to vmxnet3.

I also added the following line: scsi0:0.virtualSSD = 1

But it is still very slow.

How can this be solved ?

Thanks,

Hubert

[wila]

Hi,

You are not mentioning how many files you are copying.

If you are copying a large amount of files then shared folder perform really bad.

If that's not the case, then make sure that your antivirus is not scanning that drive.

In particular Windows Defender is pretty notorious when it is allowed to scan a shared folder.

--

Wil

[Hubert32]

Thanks,

At your advice, I excluded the Z:\ folder in the Windows Defender.

Yes, I am copying a lot of small files (2 kB - 20 kB) to and from Z:.

Result after change: staying slow: even now VMWare Fusion 11 freezes for a few minutes, Explorer 84.4% and the beachball appears. After that Window virtual screen is flickering (this did not happen in version 😎 two times on black and then the copied files appear in the Explorer.

Hubert

[wila]

Hi,

The size of the files isn't very relevant, but if it is a lot of files then yes it is very slow.

VMware's host guest file system just isn't designed for that kind of usage and standard windows sharing mechanism (which apple supports as well) is a much better alternative.

There's another tweak via a vmx setting that you can try. I have it on this VM as well, but it disables the notify mechanism.

This means that you won't see new files appear or change in the folder if you have it open in Windows Explorer.

If you want to see the latest version of files then you will have to explicitly refresh (via refresh icon in windows explorer, or function key F5)

The .vmx setting is:

isolation.tools.hgfs.notify.enable = "FALSE"

You can add it to your vmx file with the VM shutdown and no window open on the vm in Fusion.

If you happen to use macOS TextEdit for the edit then beware that you don't end up using smart quotes as they are not recognized.

But as mentioned, the best solution is to use something else as the shared folders feature.

--

Wil