Hard Disk Settings Panel (for Virtual Disks)

Choose: VM > Settings > Hardware > Hard Disk

A virtual disk is a file or set of files that appears as a physical disk drive to a guest operating system. The files can be on the host machine or on a remote computer. The Hard Disk values displayed in the Disk file section, the Capacity section, and Disk information section are read-only. Most of these values are set at the time when the disk was created.

If you want to use the Defragment button to defragment a disk, or if you want to add or remove a virtual disk, power off the virtual machine before using the buttons on this tab:

•	To add a new or existing virtual disk to this virtual machine, click Add. For details about all the considerations you need to take into account when creating a virtual disk, see the chapter about using disks in the Workstation User’s Manual.

•	To remove a virtual disk, select the disk and click Remove. The disk is disconnected from this virtual machine, but the disk file itself is not deleted from the system. You can add it back again later.

•	To defragment the disk, click Defragment. For more information, see Defragmenting a Virtual Disk.

•	To change the node or mode, click Advanced. By default, virtual disks created with Workstation have the following properties:

•	All changes made are immediately written to the disk (just like what typically happens with a physical computer’s hard disk).

•	When you take a snapshot of the virtual machine, the data on the disk is saved as part of the snapshot.

You can, however, specify modes for the disk other than the default. For example, you can specify that the disk is independent of snapshots and that changes are not saved to the disk. See Advanced Hard Disk Settings Dialog Box.

Defragmenting a Virtual Disk

Click Defragment to defragment the virtual disk. Defragmenting rearranges data on the virtual disk so that the individual blocks that make up the specific files on the virtual disk are contiguous.

Using the defragment feature improves the performance of your virtual disk, but it does not reduce the amount of storage space the virtual disk consumes on your host operating system. Defragmenting the disk can be a time-consuming process.

The defragmentation process requires free working space on the host computer’s disk. If your virtual disk is contained in a single file, for example, you need free space equal to the size of the disk’s file. For details about all the considerations you need to take into account when defragmenting a virtual disk, see the chapter about using disks in the Workstation User’s Manual.