RawDisk as Independant-Persistent but no snapshot availability

[derekpapworth]

‌Hi all,

I've added a partition of my MacBook disk to a Windows VM as a RawDisk set to Independant-persistent as I need to share some projects between Windows and Mac but can't use network or shared folder as Visual Studio doesn't like network shares for projects.

EVerything works ok but the VM now doesn't have snapshot capability (greyed out in Fusion) ... I understand one can't do memory snapshots with raw disk but even when the VM is shutdown I can't access snapshots.

is this a bug or something I'm not doing right? Given the whole point of Independant is to say "don't include in snapshot" its a bit of oddity that you can't do snapshots!?!?

thanks for any help/clues on this one

DErek

[admin]

Hi,

Thanks for using Fusion!

The snapshot feature is not available for the physical hard disk on the Mac by design.

VMware Fusion's snapshot mechanism works by creating a second disk file that is used to track the changes made to the master virtual hard disk from the point when the snapshot was created on a block-by-block basis. This allows the snapshot feature to be independent of the guest operating system installed. However this feature also requires that the master disk not be modified in any way after the snapshot is in place. All future changes must be recorded in the snapshot disk hard disk file.

[wila]

Hi,

If I am reading your description correctly that you added a 2nd disk to a VM as a raw partition to a windows VM which then disables all snapshot functionality then yes that sounds like a bug.

edit: Btw, your usage scenario is VERY weird. If it works then you have to shut down your guest before accessing the partition from the host as you can under no circumstance have two OS's access the same disk at the same time, if you use that then expect disk corruption and corrupted data. Your requirements seem to match something called source control, which is the standard way to work on the same project from different machines.

--

Wil

[derekpapworth]

Hi there,

I understand how the snapshot features works but as I mentioned I set this second disk to be Independant-Persistant specifically to exclude it from snapshots.

Best regards,

Derek

[amzhang]

Hi derekpapworthderekpapworth,

Welcome to Fusion community!

If you set a VIRTUAL disk to to Independent-persistent, snapshot will only work when VM is shutdown.

If you are using a physical disk, you can't take a snapshot for it. It doesn't matter if the disk is set to Independent-persistent or not.

Please refer to VMware Workstation 12 Pro Documentation Center

Prerequisites

■	Verify that the virtual is not configured to use a physical disk. You cannot take a snapshot of a virtual machine that uses a physical disk.

You said, "but as I mentioned I set this second disk to be Independent-Persistent specifically to exclude it from snapshots." ,

Actually, Independent-persistent exclude from snapshots only works for Virtual disk.

Please refer  to： VMware Workstation 12 Pro Documentation Center

Do I make it clear? Hope that can help you.

Best Regards,

Amanda