I had read previously was that the monolithic file offered better performance. Is that not the case in your experience?
I don't see the harm in having a 70GB monolithic file on a 256GB drive. I often run it on a different PC with only a 148GB drive. Do you feel that splitting this into separate files is better when limited by disk space? if so, how so?
BTW - What triggered my issues lately is that my company started encrypted hard drives, including my virtual one. So, now my VM takes up the full disk space, not just the size of the data contained within (I didn't pre-allocate space in the past). So, I'm trying to readjust.