WMware Workstation 12 Pro, Windows 10 guest thinks it's installed on a SSD, but the .vmdk file is placed on a classical HDD

[Mario88]

Hi,

after upgrading to WMware Workstation 12 Pro, my Windows 10 guest thinks it's installed on an SSD, but the .vmdk file definitively placed on a classical HDD. Here is what I get: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Iwhn6.png (notice the "Solid state drive" under "Media type") This was not the case with WMware Workstation 11.

In Windows, there are a lot of internal parameters that change depending on whether Windows is installed on a SSD or a classical HDD. If these parameters are set to "SSD", but it's actually on a classical HDD, this can result in degraded performance.

My question is: How can tell my Windows 10 guest that the disk is actually on a classical HDD, not on a SSD? (Disk type is SCSI)

[a_p_]

What you may try is to add

scsiX:Y.virtualSSD = 0

to the VM's configuration (.vmx) file. Replace "X:Y" with the virtual disk's SCSI-ID and make sure you do this with VMware Workstation (or at least the VM's tab) closed to ensure the configuration is re-read after the modification.

André

[mfelker]

Hate to say this friend but did you really shell out $149 for this "upgrade".  Get your money back while you can and downgrade to your earlier version.

[a_p_]

@mfelker

Would you mind to provide a reason why?

IMO such a statement without any additional information is pretty useless. Don't you think so too?

André

[Mario88]

Why should I ask my money back just because of a tiny problem?

I'm still in evaluation, by the way...

[Mario88]

@a.p. : Doesn't work. I also run "Winsat formal -V" after that, but it's still recognized as SSD.

[NoelC1]

What's the actual performance measurement with regard to disk speed (as compared to your host system)?  I ask because it occurred to me that maybe VMware has finally embraced write-back caching using the system's RAM and is delivering really great virtual disk performance in the guest.  That would actually be something worth having.

Using Workstation 11, my Win 10 guest disk performance is measured at a little less than that of my Win 8.1 host system.  If yours reverses that, it would be very interesting indeed.

By the way, if you're not doing any other kinds of benchmarking, there's a nice tool for reading out the "traditional" WEI scores here:  Winaero WEI Tool

-Noel

[Mario88]

Your are right! There is actually a very high "primary hard drive" score. I get a score of 7,4, see here. There is no way you can reach this with a classical hard drive. The best score you could get in such a case was a 5,9 as far as I know.

According to an answer here: Defrag Detects RAID-0 HDD as SSD‌, the Windows defrag utility actually relies on the WinSAT score to classify a disk as either SSD or HDD.

I tried it out and tweaked my "randomreaddiskscore" to a much lower value, then the defrag utility indeed recognizes my drive as HDD again.

So it's a design issue of Windows, and not VMware's fault. But maybe VMware could provide a workaround for this?

[mfelker]

Yeah it was sorta a rant I must confess.  A big part of my upset is due to the Linux versoon of WS, which absolutely needs to be recompiled using GCC 5.2 or it will become uninstallable fairly soon.  Also the constant use of third party patches for kernel upgrades is just ridulcous for a product that claims to be compatible with new mainstream Linux distros.  At the moment I am using Windows 10 but want to dual boot with Linux and I won't be able to share VM development in both environments.  Windows 10 guest is definitely supported  in WS 11 - it is one of the choices for an OS.  And I've had no problems whatsover using WS 11 on my Windows 10 hosts. 

BTW The marketing for WS 12 claims 39 improvements beyond the minor ones listed.  Is there a documents which shows these??

I have tried the Tech Preview 1 and could use until Jan - longer than the trial version - however I can't discern any difference between it and WS 11 - especially if you disable the debug mode which is clearly not needed now.

If somebody can give me a reason to upgrade for $149 I'll listen but I don't think that's going to happen.