camner's Posts

Well, here's why I think it might be relevant for backups. I use Time Machine for backups, which of course only backs up changed files. If one uses a single file for a VM disk, then any time even a little bit changes on the virtual disk, the entire multi-gigabyte file gets backed up, because it has changed. If one has separate files, presumably not all of the separate files will have changed when one accesses the VM, and Time Machine will only back up some of the files, rather than all. Am I misunderstanding something here?

I am running into exactly the same issue. I specify "split disk into 2GB files" when I set up the new VM, but only one file is created. BUT, I've noticed that this really isn't a "file" but a package. If I control-click (right click) on the VM file and "open package contents," the contents contain a bunch of split disks! So, I'm wondering if this is a bug in which Fusion incorrectly combines the split files into a single package. It seems to me that by doing so, it defeats one of the purposes of splitting the disk into 2GB files, which is to simplify backups.

Thank you very much. Sorry if I provided too much information...I was trying to avoid the typical "back and forth" of having someone more expert than I having to ask repeatedly for additional information. I appreciate your help.

Thanks for the quick reply. According to System Profiler and Disk Utility, the external drive enclosure is a Cypress Semiconductor enclosure. The outside of the enclosure says "Metal Gear Box". The drive on the inside is a Seagate 250MB 7200.9 IDE drive. The drive is partitioned as a single partition with a GUID partition table, formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). File Vault is NOT enabled. VMWare is using 1.5GB of RAM (my setting). I don't know how relevant this may be, but the virtual machine was created by running VMWare Converter on a physical machine. Again, I don't know its relevance, but for some reason the virtual machine created by VMWare Converter set up the main (internal) virtual hard drive as a SCSI, rather than IDE drive, although the physical drive on the physical machine from which the virtual machine was created is an IDE drive. I hope this information is useful. It's a shame not to be able to use a USB external drive!