Split Vmdk Into Multiple Files

May 20, 2016. Jan 30, 2012.

• Vmdk File Open
• Vmdk File Download
• Open Vmdk File In Vmware

Recently I faced a bit of an issue with my Xamarin install with licensing since I have a few computers that I develop on to target multiple platforms, and for mobility purposes. An issue I quickly faced was that the performance with USB 3.0 was not exactly the best. With a flash drive it was completely unusable so I tried this method below which made it a little better, but only just. Long story short I purchased a proper external USB 3.0 hard drive and the performance is now… tolerable.

Why split the file? Mainly for better performance. Simply put the more files there are the faster the virtual machine should run. In theory anyway. By default and as far as I know the smallest is 2GB. I could be wrong. This will allow for FATex and FAT32 to allow for a virtual machine as well even with their single file size limitations.

Method

1. Open command prompt as an administrator.
2. Enter the following commands in purple to arrive at the VMWare directory in Windows. The text in black is what you should see in the command prompt window.
3. Then run the following command to convert the image into 2GB expandable partitions on another disk.

Vmdk File Open

Just a few extra tidbits about the above so you know exactly what you are typing.

• -r introduces the original/source disk, which you must supply in full, including the name
• -t introduces the new/target disk, which you must supply in full, including a new name
• 1 refers to the virtual disk type

Note: There are several available disk types:

• 0: A growable virtual disk contained in a single file (called 'monolithic sparse').
• 1: A growable virtual disk split into 2GB files (called 'split sparse').
• 2: A preallocated virtual disk contained in a single file (called 'monolithic flat').
• 3: A preallocated virtual disk split into 2GB files (called 'split flat').

Vmdk File Download

Complete input as seen during my conversion.

Once this is done one more thing might be needed. You may have to copy your old settings files to the new split file location so VMWare will know what to load. Otherwise you will not be able to open your vmdk file. In addition you may need to link your settings to the new vmdk. This is done by the following.

Copy the files below from the source location.

Paste them in the target location. I do not think they have to be the same name as the vmdk but I would just for organization.

Now load up VMWare and open the new split vmdk. Once you try and run it this screen should appear.

Open Vmdk File In Vmware

Browse to the new location and load the file it is looking for.