Re: WDSC in VM

From: Arco Simonse

Hi Joe,

you wrote:

If this DOES work even marginally, I'm going to definitely go out and

For example a 200 Gb virtual disk that is not preallocated will occupy no
more than 26 Mb when it is still empty. When you install software in the
VM, the virtual disk file will grow automatically. Of course this can have
performance issues, since the fileblocks of the virtual disk file will not
be written contiguous if other programs also write to the same physical
disk.

You can defragment and shrink inside the VM when you install the VMWare
Tools in it. You always should install those tools in the VM, they add
enhancements to your VM.
To make copying VM's between computers (or copying to usb sticks) a little
easier, I also check the 2Gb split option most of the times.
I don't know if splitting the virtual disk has performance penalties, but
if so I never noticed them.

A WDSC7AE install requires about 6GB all by itself once you factor in the
temporary space.  It would be nice if you could point the temporary space to
an additional drive, but there's no way to do that that I can see.

We'll see what happens.  I've trimmed it down in some areas, included a few
optional features and I think an 8GB machine should work fine.

Joe