Multiple Files - Feature or Issue?

[IReallTryhard]

Hi All,

When I created the VM for XP I kept the pre-selected "Multiple files" option thinking (hoping?) that when doing backups, only the files that actually changed when running the VM, would need backing up.

Unfortunately, when I start the VM, all of the files have their Last Accessed Date change to Today. This means that even if I only start XP and then close straight away, without doing anything else, all 19G of files need backing up next time I do a backup.

Is it possible to have only the VM files that are used or changed to have their Date changed? If not then this should be regarded as a feature request. The files sizes all stayed the same, the only thing that changed was the Date. Come next backup time, I have to wait 20-minutes instead of 5.

p.s. I realize the Date thing is a windows doing, but the existing dates could be grabbed by Player on starting the VM and then adjusted (grep) on exit after windows has had it's play with the dates when they are closed.

Harry

[RDPetruska]

Most likely, all sectors of the virtual hard drive will be touched when the guest is running, so all pieces of the file(s) will have the current date/time as last accessed.

The benefits of splitting the virtual disk into multiple 2Gb sliced files is: file copying/archiving, shrinking, resizing.  All operations like that will only need 2 Gb plus a small additional overhead on the host of free space.  If you have the disk as a single file, you need as much free space as the max. size of the disk!  Also, splitting it creates the disk descriptor file as a separate file, instead of embedded into the single file - making troubleshooting disk repair MUCH easier (the separate descriptor file).

[IReallTryhard]

Thanks for the reply, but that's why I am suggesting it should be a feature request if it is not currently possible.

Player will know which files it has Modified during the session and only write those changed ones back out. Then at closing the VM, adjust the DateTime of the untouched files back to their Date when Player launched the VM. That way a backup checks that date and sees that those files do not need updating on the backup drive.

As it is now, all files get Today's date and thus all files are backed up, even though a lot of them are totally unchanged.

I am a retired programmer and I hate working for software when the software should be working for me.