Do VM's run faster on an SSD than on a HDD?

[BaidDSB]

I have a VMware Windows 10 VM. the files are placed on my HDD.

 

It kinda feels slow inside the VM.

 

If i move the VM files to my NVME, will the VM run faster?

[Eigenvektor]

That depends on why it is slow. If it is held back by I/O performance, an SSD would help. But if you're limited by CPU performance or RAM performance, it's not going to help. As a general rule of thumb, an SSD will make the system feel snappier, because things load faster.

[BaidDSB]

11 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

That depends on why it is slow. If it is held back by I/O performance, an SSD would help. But if you're limited by CPU performance or RAM performance, it's not going to help. As a general rule of thumb, an SSD will make the system feel snappier, because things load faster.

well im giving my VM 4 processors and 2 cores [the max im apparently allowed from my 5600x] and 16 gb of my 32gb ram.

 

it only started slowing down a week or 2 ago. before that it was very snappy for months.

[Eigenvektor]

12 minutes ago, BaidDSB said:

4 processors and 2 cores

Does not compute Do you mean 2 cores and 4 threads?

 

In any case, you'll want to diagnose performance issues the same way you'd do for a normal PC. Have a look into task manager, anything using a lot of CPU or a lot of RAM? Anything heavy running on the host itself? You're effectively running two PCs on the same hardware, so load of one can affect performance of the other.

[Kilrah]

A VM is a machine running an OS like any other, so just as it's pretty terrible to run an OS from an HDD on a real machine it'll be the same for a VM.

[BaidDSB]

10 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

A VM is a machine running an OS like any other, so just as it's pretty terrible to run an OS from an HDD on a real machine it'll be the same for a VM.

ok, so how do i change the VM from my HDD to my SSD?

[Nuzicx]

1 hour ago, BaidDSB said:

ok, so how do i change the VM from my HDD to my SSD?

2 hours ago, BaidDSB said:

the files are placed on my HDD

Move said files in file manager to the NvMe and update the VM settings to point the virtual drive to the new location.

 

However if your use case is this: "I'm not concerned about the performance of the windows OS itself and my focus is an application (like a database), I will load the database into ram." Then it doesn't matter, your bypassing the need for a HDD, it's only used to load the database on startup or make changes. The live environment stays in ram.

[manikyath]

"run" faster - no.

 

"access the disk faster" - yes.

 

and windows 10 just really needs fast disk access to feel snappy.

[cmndr]

Modern operating systems run poorly on HDDs in general, no matter what the context. There might be some "light" versions of linux that are OK on HDDs but SSDs are so cheap you really should just use an SSD. 

You can get SSDs for as low as $20ish these days. If it's a small enough OS... $7ish to get a 16GB optane stick is about as cheap as it gets.