So I ran a little experiment, for shits and giggles, and it worked. So figured I'd share.
I have a 4TB NAS (network storage). Since VAM starts to run sluggish with a lot of Vars in the local directory, I decided to try and eliminate that, but still be able to access the vars. In the hopes of gaining performance back(in the menus and scene loading) and space.
So what I did was make a Symbolic link to my (backup) Addon's folder that's on my Nas and that worked! So what I did was move my main addon's folder outside of VaM's folder and made a Symbolic link to the mapped drive. Since my backup wasn't up-to-date with what I have locally, I could see what was the latest var on the backup, go into VaM and search for that and it showed. I also know it's working because I'm watching the network performance and I see the activity to and from.
Main thing is I wanted to free up space on the drive VaM is on, but not lose access to all the vars. Since the Var's are not being loaded and accessed locally, it seems to give a little performance back along with space, like menus opening a little faster, female morphs, cloths, hairs etc. Just the initial load of VaM takes a bit, which I believe is do to the network speed & NAS drive speed i'm seeing in task manager on the vam process.
So in "theory" this can also work if you have your addon folder on another drive. I think the Var loading portion (using this method) will depend on your drive speed (or network and nas drive speed if you go the route I did) But I really haven't gotten a chance to do a performance benchmark yet. Just keep in mind that VaM will be accessing/loading the vars from another location. I also think and "assume" if you use this method, have another ssd or hdd you are going to use for the Link, you could turn bitlocker on and it'll prevent any malicious scripts from causing any harm, like deleting files. Course bitlocker is a bit more complex in set up and utilizing the way we want it, so the average user won't be savy with it. Plus there are other things you can do, once the folder is isolated like this from the main VaM folder.
This is the guide I followed.
You must be registered to see the links
The main thing to remember, is VaM looks for a folder. So trying to do a shortcut to the AddonPackages wont work, which this symbolic link fixes.