Is there a file size limit to drag files out of a VM?

[ELinder]

I am trying to copy a 45 GB catalog file out of a MacOS 10.7 Lion VM to my host system, but I get an error "cannot copy files from the virtual machine". Copying smaller files works.

Is there a file size limit for this kind of operation and if so how do I get it out of the VM?

Erich

[bluefirestorm]

There is not much in the VMware Fusion documentation about limitations and inner workings of drag and drop.

But for VMware Workstation Pro 15.x (equivalent to Fusion 11.x), the limits and inner workings (e.g. use of %TEMP% etc) are documented here

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Workstation-Pro/15.0/com.vmware.ws.using.doc/GUID-81932397-8211-49...

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Workstation-Pro/15.0/com.vmware.ws.using.doc/GUID-5FC42BAD-0AAC-4E...

What I can tell you it seems to work well beyond the 4MB limits but I don't know what the real upper limit is.

But given the large size (45GB), perhaps you should use some other method (e.g. USB thumb drive, USB SSD/HDD and attach it to the Lion VM or through network copy) to get to the host system.

If your intention is to use the host as just a temporary holding area for a new VM, one possible alternative is to attach the Lion VM virtual disk to the new VM and copy the file(s) that way (the VM equivalent of detaching a physical storage device from one physical machine to another physical machine).