Backing up the guest VM

[bobfritts]

I have copied the Virtual Machine folder (in my documents folder) to an external USB drive. The file is about 16GB, and I renamed the folder Virtual Machine 9/6/07. Now I have a complete copy of the guest operating system, one snapshot, and all data as well.

I first tried to copy to a FAT32 external USB drive but got errors because of the 4GB limit of FAT32. Then I tried a NTFS USB drive, but OS X will read but not write to a NTFS formatted drive. There are ways around this, but they start with MacFuse and go on with other complex steps which were too much for me. So, I took a standard NTFS USB external drive (that was clean of data), suspended the VM, opened applications, utilities and used the disk utility. By selecting the whole mounted disk, choosing erase and using the default MAC OS extended (journaled) setting, I created a HFS+ (MAC OS) formatted disk.

This overcame the 4 GB limit and I was able to copy the whole VM folder. True, I cannot access this folder in Windows, but I do not need to. If I have a HD crash in my iMAC I can replace the HD, install OS X from a CD, install Fusion from a download and then copy back the archival copy held in my external HD (HFS+)

\[I hope!!]

I know I am a freak on backup, but that is just from having bad experiences with HD failures.

[Mac_hatter]

Disk Utility will let you format your USB2 drive as FAT32. Won't work.

Windows CD should let you format your USB2 drive. Can't see it.

Both don't work until Fusion can 'talk to' add'l drives.... it is too complex!

Things that aren't a problem with a native "Windows on Mac" setup and running from a hard drive rather than inside a VM.

You'd have to backup to multiple DVDs. Vista will do "Complete PC backup" to DVDs.

Does Fusion support dual-layer 8GB DVDs?

[Li-fan_Chen]

I don't think you are a freak at all. I have been doing that except that I have had the most awful luck with USB external enclosures. I have tried several Vantec's and the end result has been corruptions that are really hard to recover from, from pictures, to zip files, to VMs. I have tried it all (NTFS, HFS+, FAT32), all to no avail. This is of course with careful USB unmounting. I have several Vantecs and this happens on all the enclosures.

So lately I am doing some soul searching. What can I do to avoid this sort of problem for serious data.

Possibility #1 Is it going to a better grade enclosure? Lacie? Other World's Computing? OWC seems to be very proud of their enclosure controllers. Oxford this and that. Will that make a difference?

Possibility #2 Going to firewire. Most of the Quad interface ones are no more expensive than USB. This gives you a fighting chance at avoid USB most of the time. Still not sure if it would reduce corruptions.

Possibility #3 Decide what causes the corruptions. It might be the hard disk. Spinrite is suppose to help you mark off bad sectors from the get-go when you buy a new drive.

Possibility #4 Trust the controller that comes with your mobo by falling back on SATA and IDE. IDE would require Macbooks and MacBookPros to have swappable drives. eSATA is not available on either. On MBP supposely you can add a Express Card, but again, this is trusting some third party for a controller.

Possibility #5 Network share. With 802.11n, you can probably use SAMBA, AFS, and NFS to back up your files reasonably reliably.

Possibility #6 Have a canary in the coal mine. Have some sort of super MD5 tool to watch your files like a hawk between two Sync Sites. Like a Tripwire tool that works on mirror sites. MD5/SHA* uses up processing power though, I am not sure if you want to apply this to gigabytes of files.

These are all ideas in my head, but I am frustrated because it should be high time we can rely on enclosures. They should mount and unmount without worrying about delayed writes. They should have world class controllers. I really believe this is a pain worth solving.

In the meanwhile my vantec enclosures are gathering dust.

[RDPetruska]

Personally, I'd convert the disk to a 2GB-split type. This solves the issue of the files being too large for the FAT-formatted external disk; also there are smaller chunks to copy - less chance of things getting corrupted (and less data to recopy if it does). It also has the added benefit that if you want to run defrag or shrink, all you need is 2 GB of free space; if you have a monolithic file, you need as much free space as the maximum defined size of the virtual disk to defrag/shrink it!

[Li-fan_Chen]

Fusion offers the file split when you are going through the wizard of creating the VM. It's hidden as an advanced feature though. I always use the file split, just on principle. Too many FAT32s out there getting in the way of large file transportation: be preemptive, split your files.

[RDPetruska]

>Fusion offers the file split when you are going through the wizard of creating the VM.

And you can use the vmware-vdiskmanager utility to convert a monolithic disk to a split disk, too, once it's been created.