Allow hot-adding 2 SATA devices for Windows 10 VM startup performance improvement

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
Windows 10 Virtual Machine will allow hot-adding 2 SATA devices during 1 powering cycle.

Environment

VMware Workstation Pro 16.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation Player 16.x (Windows)
VMware Workstation Player 16.x (Linux)
VMware Fusion 12.x
VMware Workstation Pro 16.x (Windows)

Cause

• The previous versions of VMware Workstation allows hot-adding up to tens of SATA devices for each Windows 10 VM.
• It has identified this slows down the VM startup and hence has been disabled as optimizing default port numbers can improve Windows 10 VM start up performance.

Resolution

To resolve the issue follow the steps below:

• Set ahci.optimizePortCount=FALSE in VM’s config file to allow hot-adding up to tens of SATA devices for each AHCI controller.

To know more, see: Editing the .vmx file of a VMware Workstation and VMware Player virtual machine