VMware Fusion Users Beware
Just came across the following article about a possible bug with VMware Fusion.
VMware blames Apple for Fusion corruption
According to VMware, the underlying problem is in the way Mac OS X
handles unbuffered I/O. The issue is variously referred to as either a
bug or “a disagreement between Fusion and OS X about what sequences of
disk-write calls are legal to make.”Unbuffered I/O works by sending data directly to the file, as opposed
to buffered I/O which stages the data to be written into a block of
memory (a buffer) and then writes the contents of the buffer out to the
file.The good news is that with its default settings, Fusion does not use unbuffered I/O.
Well, evidently, I am not the power user of years past, as I did not know there was such a setting to change.
For now, VMware says “We have reported this issue to Apple, but until
this bug is resolved, we recommend that all VMware Fusion users ensure
they select the default option, in VMware Fusion Preferences, for
‘Optimize for virtual machine disk performance’ to guard against
potential data loss.”
