Accepted Solutions
Steve247 wrote: Will my problem be solved if I format the drive in NTFS format on the Mac side, and then re-install 8.1?
In your OP when you said "Win 8.1 is installed on a 128 GB SSD" along with the error message you're getting I'm assuming this an attached external storage device that's formatted FAT32.
Formatting it NTFS will be of no use unless you have a third-party NTFS R/W Driver installed like Tuxera NTFS for Mac or similar. Even then that would not be my choice of Filesystem Format, I'd choose OS X's native HFS+ for the external storage device. Of course if you're using this device cross-platform with Windows and or Linux then HFS+ is going to be an issue too, requiring third-party HFS+ R/W Driver. So the common denominator if using cross-platform will be exFAT. However that said I do not like using exFAT as it only maintains one copy of the FAT and if it gets messed up by not properly un-mounting the device before disconnecting it, well there's a good chance for corruption that's beyond easy recovery.
Note: If you can backup the Virtual Machine Package elsewhere while reformatting the external storage device then you'll not have to reinstall it! 
Hi,
Steve247 wrote:
Hello,
I have Fusion 7.1, Windows 8.1, running on a Mac Pro. Win 8.1 is installed on a 128 GB SSD. According to properties in Win 8.1 the drive is formatted in NTFS. When I try to suspend my fusion session I get a message saying:
The guest file system is formatted in NTFS, that is not the issue.
Your external disk that is connected to mount point /Volumes/WIN8 is most likely formatted as fat32, you can check that in OS X.
It is the disk format at host (OS X) level here that is your problem.
Unfortunately VMware made a change to how split disk files work since Fusion 7 and instead of growing to a maximum of 2 GB they now can grow much larger depending on how big your guest disk is. The new minimum max chunk size is 4GB.
For more info see this thread on VMware Workstation (this is also true for fusion 7)
Re: Splitting disk to 2gb chunks
Hopefully you can still shut down the VM properly. Suspend won't work.
--
Wil
edit: changed link to deep link so you get to the data without having to read the whole thread.
Steve247 wrote: Will my problem be solved if I format the drive in NTFS format on the Mac side, and then re-install 8.1?
In your OP when you said "Win 8.1 is installed on a 128 GB SSD" along with the error message you're getting I'm assuming this an attached external storage device that's formatted FAT32.
Formatting it NTFS will be of no use unless you have a third-party NTFS R/W Driver installed like Tuxera NTFS for Mac or similar. Even then that would not be my choice of Filesystem Format, I'd choose OS X's native HFS+ for the external storage device. Of course if you're using this device cross-platform with Windows and or Linux then HFS+ is going to be an issue too, requiring third-party HFS+ R/W Driver. So the common denominator if using cross-platform will be exFAT. However that said I do not like using exFAT as it only maintains one copy of the FAT and if it gets messed up by not properly un-mounting the device before disconnecting it, well there's a good chance for corruption that's beyond easy recovery.
Note: If you can backup the Virtual Machine Package elsewhere while reformatting the external storage device then you'll not have to reinstall it!
Yes the HFS+ file system is OK to use and is the recommended file system.
Be careful to make the copy of your virtual machine package with Fusion shut down.
--
Wil