VMWare & External Drive Issues

[METSYSTEM]

Gents, I have just purchased a new Verbatim 1TB USB harddrive and have installed VMWare Workstation on my "Real" computer. I have been building Virtual machines on the VMWare and putting them, (Their memory) on the external drive. (This is to support rockwells multi version FTView SE packages) The VMs install fine, However; As soon as I restart the main machine the external harddrive starts having problems. In "My Computer" it flashes between recognised and not there. Then eventually tells me that the hrdware has failed to install correctly even though it was running fine prior to the VMs being installed . Im completely baffled by this. The only thing I can do is mount the drive on another machine, delete all VMs which then lets my laptop see it again. Any advise would really be appreciated Best Regards Alex

[IO_Rack]

I have not had the exact issue you mention but issues nonetheless. I've successfully used Western Digital Passports with no issues. I recently purchased a Seagate Go Flex that will suddenly freeze on me for several minutes. It usually happens when the drive is being accessed by other means than the VM. (eg, Windows Explorer on the Host machine), but also freezes for what appears to be no reason. Seagate tech support told me they did not support running virtual machines from their drives as the bottle neck is in the cable. They could not give me an answer as to why I don't have issues with the Western Digital Passport. I have not used other brands and this is all the info I have. I would be interested to hear other's experiences.