VM Freezes host & guest for 90-120 seconds

[damonbreeden]

Hello,

Have been using VMWare Fusion happily on my Mac for a couple months now. Boot Camp VM, Win7 Pro x64. Over the past few days, however, a very annoying problem has cropped up: the VM (I believe) is freezing my system for 1.5 - 2 minutes at a time, about once an hour. After the first few times it happened, I started running Activity Monitor on the host and Resource Monitor on the guest. Here's what I've noticed: drive activity on the host drops to zero and CPU activity on the guest pegs at 100% during these dropouts. Vice-versa can't be said; CPU is normal on Mac and HD activity on Windows is low (but I don't think zero). All programs on Windows are completely unresponsive and programs on Mac are very unresponsive but not totally. After the dropout drive activity and CPU use are normal and I don't need to do anything to get back to work, it all just works again. Specs are as follows:

2012 13" MacBook Pro (non-retina)

2.9 Ghz Intel Core i7

16GB DDR3 1600Mhz

750GB Momentus XT 7200RPM HD

OS X 10.8.2

Guest VM:

Windows 7 Pro x64

8GB RAM

112 GB Boot Camp partition

1 core devoted to VM

Fusion 5.0.2

The Momentus XT is relatively new (2 weeks) but has been working OK. It's also a hybrid drive: http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/Seagate-Momentus-XT-hybrid-hard-drive-750-GB-SATA-600/2539150.aspx

Any insight?

[ColoradoMarmot · Accepted solution]

I've had no end of issues with that particular drive, and had this problem specifically.  It's definitely a drive problem - I'd suggest either switching back to a regular drive (and I recommend Western Digital - the scorpio black is pretty speedy) or an SSD.

[damonbreeden]

I was hoping that wouldn't be the answer. That was my next idea to try but since it's such a pain in the ass to switch out drives (not to mention clone them and make it work!) that I was hoping for something else.

If no resolution by this weekend I'll make it my weekend project (and it will probably take all weekend).

[damonbreeden]

Also meant to mention that I do have NTFS-3G installed, but as Fusion does, the Bootcamp partition is unmounted so shouldn't effect anything.

From: dlhotka <communities-emailer@vmware.com<mailto:communities-emailer@vmware.com>>

Reply-To: communities-emailer <communities-emailer@vmware.com<mailto:communities-emailer@vmware.com>>

Date: Thursday, February 7, 2013 12:56 PM

To: Damon <DamonBreeden@daytonsuperior.com<mailto:DamonBreeden@daytonsuperior.com>>

Subject: New message: "VM Freezes host &amp; guest for 90-120 seconds"

VMware Communities<http://communities.vmware.com/index.jspa>

VM Freezes host & guest for 90-120 seconds

reply from dlhotka<http://communities.vmware.com/people/dlhotka> in VMware Fusion® (for Mac) - View the full discussion<http://communities.vmware.com/message/2191505#2191505

[ColoradoMarmot]

I've had terrible luck with third party NTFS drivers, but others here have had different experiences.  I doubt that's the issue, but it could be - I'd give the HD sway a try first.

Carbon Copy Cloner is excellent for cloning drives (including the recovery partition).

[damonbreeden]

It's becoming more frequent and longer lockups. Definitely going to do this tonight.

I do use CCC for OS X, and it's great, but I had a hell of a time getting both OS X and Windows to copy over last time. Ended up using a Linux live cd and used dd to copy the whole thing. Worked like a champ, only thing that happened was Office for Mac wanted to be re-registered.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Try WinClone for the boot camp partition - CCC should work just fine for the OSX side.

That definitely sounds like a failing hard drive.  Good luck!

[damonbreeden]

Did it with DD again. It was pretty painless the second time, since I got it figured out. Swapped the drive on Monday afternoon, haven't had any freezes since to speak of.

Two things, for what it's worth: I ran in Windows (natively) all day Monday and didn't experience any freezes. I read reports of over-zealous Mac power saving settings doing this, but never any indication of how to disable said settings. Also checked for new firmware on the drive, there was none. Either way after cloning back to and installing the original drive, things are working just fine again.

Chalk this up to not-fully-developed technology.

[ColoradoMarmot]

I think that's the 'put hard drive to sleep when possible' setting in system preferences.

If it is the hybrid drive, it might come back after it does it's caching.