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November 04, 2008

Bonus Tip: Snapshots

Snapshots are not particular tricky, but they are often misunderstood, on both the hosted and the VI side. (I just had to clean up a huge Fusion snapshot that was really difficult -- I tried to commit my snapshot (merge it back into the base image) by deleting it, but I didn't have enough space left to make the new clean file. Oh well, I didn't need those iMovie files anymore.)

Link: VMware: Team Fusion: Bonus Tip: Snapshots.

People sometimes get confused about how snapshots work and how to use them. While snapshots are incredibly useful for many things, one major misconception is thinking that they are a form of backup - they're not! If a lightning strike totally fries your computer, a snapshot won't help if it's on the same disk (because your snapshot just got fried too). Sure, you'll probably get lucky - if your computer merely shut down uncleanly, your snapshot may still work. You might not even need to go use the snapshot. But this is not a backup, it's gambling.

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