I have run fusion using a portable drive as the location for the vmwarevm file normally located in the Domuments folder on the MAC. It seems to run normally doing this. I have two questions about this, as follows:
1. During the installation of Fusion, it asks for the location of the installation. What would be the outcome and pros and cons of loading the application onto the portable drive.
2. Currently the shared directory is set to share documents from the Documents folder on the MAC. What would be the outcome and pros and cons of loading the documents onto the portable drive.
Both of these questions come from the point of view of looking at running everything from the portable drive on different machines and carrying the portable drive to the machine that will be used.
Joe
You can install Fusion onto the portable drive, but there are still drivers and other system files which will be installed on your main drive. And will need to be installed on every computer you want to run your virtual machines on. So probably no benefit to that.
The VMs themselves, and shares, no problem.
Robert
1. During the installation of Fusion, it asks for the location of the installation. What would be the outcome and pros and cons of loading the application onto the portable drive.
Fusion can only be installed on the OS X System Volume and if you click the Change Install Location... button during the install you will know that it can only be installed on the OS X System Volume.
Now that doesn't stop one from moving the /Application/VMware Fusion.app bundle to another location however it is recommended that you do not move it because it can cause problems with reinstalls/upgrades and aside from that as already mentioned there are other program segments elsewhere on the OS X System Volume. VMware Fusion need to be properly installed on each system it's run on and it's not just like copying a text document form one computer to another and it just opens up.
2. Currently the shared directory is set to share documents from the Documents folder on the MAC. What would be the outcome and pros and cons of loading the documents onto the portable drive.
Both of these questions come from the point of view of looking at running everything from the portable drive on different machines and carrying the portable drive to the machine that will be used.
Setting aside any speed issues the primary concern when using external drives to run Virtual Machines would come form the external drive being accidentally disconnected while a Virtual Machine is running as this can not only trash the Virtual Machine itself it also has the potential to corrupt the Disk's Filesystem as well. So as long as proper care and handling is taken into account and you do not accidentally disconnected while the drive is in use then using external drive for document storage or running Virtual Machine from is a none issue.
As far as the speed issue obviously FireWire 800 is the better choice over FireWire 400 and or USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 over USB 2.0.
Also to reiterate the VMware Fusion.app need to be installed on the OS X System Volume and should also be left there and not moved.
I beleive that all of my questions have been answered. Thank yolu all for the feedback.
Joe