Most of the files I use in my virtual desktop environment are centrally located in a share I make accessible to the host and all the guests for ease of transfer between them.  However, there is one guest I keep fairly isolated for security reasons.  This is great, but when I need a file, it (has previously) required me to start that guest, wait, login, move the files I need to the share, then shutdown.  It’s frequent enough to be annoying.  I’d leave it up, but I prefer to keep my BIG-IP LTM VE and a couple linux guests running and there’s only so many resources.  Anyway, the annoyance hit the tipping point today and I found out that in my VMware Workstation, there is a tool to mount the guest drives in the host OS.

That’s it!  My appreciation for this product continues to grow.  For those that use the free player product, you might get some mileage out of VMware Workstation 5.5 Disk Mount Utility.  It provides the same functionality as a standalone product, though I’m not sure if it is compatible with the latest versions of player.