Hi -
Firstly, let me say that I am somewhat of a novice when it comes to technical computer things.
And this post is following up on a couple of previous posts, so if you want the full history/rundown...
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1884557#1884557
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1888387#1888387
I am trying to determine the best setup for my new iMac/Windows 7 x64. Here is my situation:
- For work, I require software that is only available for Windows, so I need to install Windows in order to install/use the software.
- I have used Fusion in the past (both on this iMac and my MBPro), so am considering getting the newest version of Fusion since I am familiar with it. If there are compelling reasons to switch to Parallels, I'm certainly open to it.
- The software I use is for satellite image processing, so I assume it would be similar (in terms of computing requirements) to 3D rendering or video processing. (just thought this background info might be useful to help determine RAM and resource allocation during setup).
- I would like to take advantage of the SSD (HD 1) for application start-up and temporary/scratch space, but save all files to the HDD (HD 2).
- The Mac side will be primarily used for iLife, Office, internet, etc.
Here is my setup:
- 2011 iMac 27"
- 3.4 GHz Core i7
- 16 GB RAM
- 250 GB SSD
- 2 TB HDD
- Currently running OSX 10.6.8, but planning to upgrade to Lion
- Currently running VM Fusion 3, but planning to upgrade to 4.1
I'm asking for help for a couple of reasons.
1) I don't think I properly set up VM Fusion 3 before, and I'd like some advice and suggestions.
2) I want to install applications on the SSD so that I can take advantage of the speed, but write to HDD so I can take advantage of the storage (on Windows, this would be set up as programs and temporary/scratch space on the C: drive and all application file output paths would be mapped to D: )
What's prompting all this is that VM Fusion will no longer start because it says my disk is full.
- I copied the VM file from the SSD to the HDD, and can open it from there. However, my image processing software license recognizes this as a new machine, and requires a new license to run. Before I do that, I want to make sure I'm all sorted out with the optimal set-up.
- When I check the size of the VM Fusion partition, it is 222 GB.
- If I boot Windows, I find that the size of my C: drive (including all applications and project output files, etc) is 80 GB (this is roughly what I would expect it to be).
- However, there are 2 network directories (Q: and Z: ), and both appear to connect to the same place --- a NAS RAID. I can navigate sub-directories, etc and all looks as I would expect.
- However, when I compare the size of those drives, Q: is 8.48 TB used, with 2.25 TB available (this is correct), but Z: is 227 GB used, with 6.14 GB available (this totally confuses me). I'm guessing that somehow when Z: was shared, it copied over as much data as it could fill on my SSD???
- I have been unable to successfully disconnect/unshare/delete Z: to free up space. Again, I am getting in to unfamiliar territory for me, so there may be other things that could be done here...
So, I'm planning to backup and delete the VM, upgrade to Lion, upgrade to VM 4.1 and start fresh. This will require me to re-install all my software and applications, but there aren't so many and I think this may be the best approach in the long run...
Any suggestions or advice will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!