Hello! I have a couple questions about VMs running on an SSD.
Q1: If I were to format an SSD to either exFat, or NTFS, which file system would modern guest VMs (Windows 11 guest) run faster on, and by how much?
Or, if exFat or NTFS file system on an SSD doesn't have a noticeable speed difference for VMs of modern OSes (Windows 11 guest), you can also say that.
Q2: Would just using an SSD make the VM run faster, or do I have to do something to make the VM faster for the SSD?
VMs running speed on SSD
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mpack
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Re: VMs running speed on SSD
I'm not aware of NTFS or exFAT having a built in speed advantage for running VMs. exFAT IME uses large cluster sizes so I would not recommend it in the case of huge numbers of small files, but for VM file sizes there should be little difference. The main advantage of exFAT applies if you are also plugging the drive into other (non-Windows) devices, since afaik it is still the case that NTFS is only officially supported by Windows. All the rest use drivers based on a reverse-engineering of Windows. Personally I don't plug my drives into non-Windows devices and so don't use exFAT.
Locating the VM on a faster drive can make the VM run faster, you don't need to do anything else. However, the mere fact that it's an SSD doesn't necessarily guarantee that the drive will be super fast. I assume we're talking USB, so the version and quality of the USB interface will make a big difference too.
Also, the cheaper external SSDs that I've seen perform relatively poorly when writing, and may have a tendency to overheat. They'll still be better than a mechanical drive though.
Locating the VM on a faster drive can make the VM run faster, you don't need to do anything else. However, the mere fact that it's an SSD doesn't necessarily guarantee that the drive will be super fast. I assume we're talking USB, so the version and quality of the USB interface will make a big difference too.
Also, the cheaper external SSDs that I've seen perform relatively poorly when writing, and may have a tendency to overheat. They'll still be better than a mechanical drive though.