I created a Win11x64 VM under Fusion 12 Player using the, I guess, experimental vTPM configuration.  Worked great for what it was.

I just upgraded to Fusion 13 Player and wanted to adjust the settings to improve VM performance.  After upgrading from Fusion 12 to 13 the VM settings show that it's set to encrypt "All the files" but to change it requires removing the vTPM module from the VM.  When I look at the vTPM configuration it states that "Removing the TPM will destroy all encrypted data on this virtual machine."

I checked the VMware website to figure out exactly what is encrypted and what destroying that data entails and can't find anything. Instructions on how to add or remove the module but that's it.  The community has more info and that is mainly about Fusion 12 right now. Honestly, I'm afraid that if I remove the TPM that my VM will just be wiped out!

Questions:

1. What exactly is encrypted when the VM is set to "All the files"?  I'm not using Bitlocker.

2. What is destroyed when the TPM is removed?  Does it just remove lines from the various .vmx, etc files or does it actually wipe the files out completely?

3. Is there a performance advantage, real world, to changing the VM to just ecrypt "Only the files needed to support a TPM"?

4. I made a copy of my Win11 VM.  Just copied the entire .vmware container.  Can I mount this as long as I have the original encryption password?  If not, what's the recommended way to bare metal backup?

It just feels like there is a feature missing.  If you have the encryption password you should be able to change the ecryption settings.  It just feels like this is a scorched earth approach to making changes to the VM.

Thanks for any info on this.