Driect (or at least faster) access to disks outside the virtual disk

[mhrichter]

My experience with my VMWare here at work is that access to "shared" disks (through the VMWare shared drives option) is INCREDIBLY slow.

Is there a way to allow the virtual machine direct, or at least faster, access to other drives on the system, or do they all have to hurt like this?

Thanks.

mhr

[Peter_vm]

Via network shares.

[RDPetruska]

Standard Windows File Sharing works just fine for me. I never noticed any difference in speed from virtual machine to network drive compared to physical machine to network drive.

[KYordy]

Why is there still a VMShare around when nearly everybody uses network shares and they are known to work better?

[Peter_vm]

In some specific situations you cannot use network shares.

[RDPetruska · Accepted solution]

Because it's quick and dirty. If all you need is a short-lived, easy to setup method of moving files between the host and guest, it works quite well. The problem is (a) The feature is not really advertised as such, so (b) Users try to use it for longer-term functionality and soon encounter some of the various issues with it, not realizing that they need a more robust solution for their needs.