Hi,
First note that slices can grow to at least 4GB, or larger depending on your virtual disk size.
There's many reasons for using a split disk over a single monolithic file.
The virtual disk split file is really the best choice even while it may seem a bit unlogical at first.
With split files you:
- get a better response, faster results when doing any VMware disk operation such as snapshots, shrink, compact, extend and defragment.
- have less chance of getting into a "all data lost" scenario when something bad happens such as running out of disk space as the split disk file scenario is much easier to repair than a growing single disk.
- don't need to have the full virtual disk size on free disk when committing snapshots
There seems to be a notion of "but it will be less performant", but in practice that is just not true.
Another side note is that, using your method, you can _only_ make backups when the VM is shut down.
If you try to make backups with the VM running then due to how the guest OS works, the backups can be corrupt as the guest OS is still writing to file allocation tables and files during the time it takes you to make the backup.
--
Wil
