Last week we covered how to use use Time Machine to back up your Virtual Machines using VMware Fusion 4. This week we thought we would take a closer look at some other options you have to back up your Virtual Machine.
Back up just the files you need with shared and mirrored folders.
Shared and Mirrored folders are an great way to backup just the files you need such as, documents, movies, and music using Time Machine. Here we will walk you through the process of how to set up mirrored and shared folders.
You can access shared and mirrored folders in the settings menu under “Sharing”
Shared Folders
Sharing folders allows you to select a folder and have access to any files stored inside that folder in both Mac OS and your Virtual Machine. This is a good way to manually select the files that you would like to have backed up via Time Machine. To choose the folders you would like to share, click the plus button to browse your Mac’s hard drive. Once you’ve selected the folder, you can simply drop the files into the shared folder to share between Mac OS and your Virtual Machine, because these files are stored in Mac OS X they will automatically be backed up via Time Machine.
Mirrored Folders
Mirrored folders work in a similar way to shared folders. In this case mirrored folders allows you to select an entire folder such as Documents or Downloads and VMware Fusion will automatically mirror the entire folder. Again, because these files are stored on the Mac, this makes it easy for you to always have a backup of your commonly used files.
Its important to note that VMware Fusion does not create duplicates of the files in the mirroring process, but simply creates one folder that’s accessible from Mac OS X and your Virtual Machine.
Looking back at Time Machine
With last weeks post we had some folks asking for more clarification regarding Time Machine Backup and VMware Fusion 4.
Its important to note that when you are backing up a Virtual Machine using Time Machine, due to the large nature of the files you will most likely see your backup drive fill up faster than normal. By using Auto protect you can greatly decrease the size of the Virtual Machine files that Time Machine backs up. This will allow you to have a back up of your entire virtual machine, without taking quite as big of a toll on the hard drive that Time Machine backs up to.
