Advanced Disk Configuration: Setting the Virtual Device Node and Mode

Select: VM > Settings > Hardware > Hard Disk > Advanced

Under Virtual device node you can select which SCSI or IDE device identifier to use for the drive. For example, if you select SCSI 0:2, the guest operating system sees the drive as ID 2 on controller 0. You determine whether the virtual disk is seen as a SCSI device or an IDE device at the time you create it.

Under Mode, you can set the following behavior for the disk:

Independent — The data on the disk is not recorded when you take a snapshot of the virtual machine.
You can further specify:
- Persistent — All changes to the data on that disk are written immediately.
- Nonpersistent — Changes are not written to the disk file. When the virtual machine is powered off or reset, all changes are discarded.

Specifying a disk mode is useful in certain special-purpose configurations in which you want to exclude disks from the snapshot. For more information on the snapshot feature, see About Snapshots.

Normal disks are included in the snapshot. Independent disks are not included in the snapshot.