When copying files from the guest to the host with VMware Tools (not using SMB, FTP, etc ...) the mechanism is very inefficient.
Consider the following scenario assuming a 10GB file to be copied from the guest to the host:
Assuming the destination location is on the same volume as the temporary location twice as much storage space as should be needed is used. In addition, the temporary file is not removed, so the wasted storage space is retained indefinitely until a background process performs clean-up of temporary files. For large files, this process means the copy takes around twice as long as should be required given the redundant second step.
I'd suggest the following changes:
All testing performed on Windows 10 v1903 x64 w/ VMware Workstation v15.5.0.
Thanks in advance.
Please forgive my stupid question ...
Why do you prefer to use vmware-tools copy when you can use reliable standard procedures like SMB, SCP or FTP ?
I would not even consider to use vmware-tools copy for files with a 10gb size ....
Sorry for the delayed response! I thought I had subscribed to notifications on this thread.
It's not a stupid question at all. The answer is that there are some cases where transferring a file to/from a VM is desired but it deliberately doesn't have a network connection, or is on a network segment which is inaccessible from the host. The 10GB size was just an example, and of course at the more extreme end. Regardless, it appears there's some "low-hanging fruit" in the handling of the VMware Tools copy support which would result in a substantial performance increase in such scenarios.