How do I change the physical location of my virtual machines

[lyew]

OK. I'm feeling quite edgy that this question might already have been posed elsewhere, but the google results haven't been helpful.

Basically my situation is this. I've just installed a new hard disk drive into my Mac Pro, and I've decided to reorganize which stuff goes into which drive, etc. I've decided to move all my virtual machines from their default user dir->documents->virtual machines folder in the Macintosh HD to the new hard drive. How do I do this? I tried copying the virtual machine file over and using the import option but that didn't seem to do the trick. Now I've ended up having another *.vmwarevm file in my default folder. The idea was to get rid of the default folder and to move all its contents over to the new drive...

[WoodyZ]

You do it the same way you would any other file or folder in your Documents folder copying or moving it to a new location. BTW this should be done while the Virtual Machines are shutdown and Fusion closed.

[lyew]

Thanks. But that's exactly what I've done. I copied the vmwarevm file/package over to the new location. But what do I do next? My virtual machine won't work now because it thinks the vmwarevm package should be in the default location, and there is nowhere that allows to me specify the new location? I tried to set up a new VM pointing to the new location, but that only recreates another vmwarevm package in the default directory.

[WoodyZ]

Delete the entries on the Virtual Machine Library window that are no longer valid and the either use the Open command on the Virtual Machine Library window or the Open command on the VMware Fusion menu bar > File > Open... command or double click the target Virtual Machine Packages form the new location.

Also take some time and read through the VMware Fusion Help File on the VMware Fusion menu bar > Help > VMware Fusion Help as this and much more is covered.

[Piggy · Accepted solution]

You can remove all of the guests appearing in the virtual machine library window and then using Finder, drag them back to the window from wherever they now live. I have a dozen I use regularly and recently moved them.

[lyew]

That was really easy. Thanks. I just don't know why when in an earlier attempt I ended up with another vmwarevm package in the default directory. It was only 30 MB and seemed to mirror the larger 20GB package I moved to the other drive. I was still reliant on the default directory, which I wanted to get rid of altogether. But following your instructions I managed to get it to work beautifully. I've deleted all VMs in the default folder and now nothing seems to be affected.