VMWare and Disk activity on .vmem file

Every time I suspend a VM on my VMWare Workstation, there is a long running disk activity on the associated vmem file. This file is a copy of the virtual machines pagefile running on the host instead of the guest.

Suspending a VM shows a progress bar, which is pretty fast. But even a long time (minutes) after it has vanished, the disk activity still continues.

The setting mainMem.useNamedFile = “FALSE” will configure VMWare to use the host paging file instead of a vmem file. Suspending a VM is much faster. The progress bar is slower, but if it disapears, the disk activity also stops.

You can find the config.ini file where you add the above setting here if you are using Windows 7: “C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Workstation\config.ini”