Kind of confused about a few things for virtualization from bootcamp

[Clly]

When you run Parallels from bootcamp, can you still share files between both OSes? I was reading forums and some say you can others say you can't. I may have misunderstood though.

Also, are there disadvantages in running parallels from bootcamp other than a the fact that you can't make your partition bigger? And it appears to be slower? (is this true?)

I'm not quite sure if I should just run it from bootcamp or not. I do play games occasionally to moderately.

If I do run windows XP from bootcamp how big should my partition be? And should I make it FAT32 if its under 32 gigs?

Are there advantages to NOT running it from bootcamp that would be worthwhile? I mainly want to install windows because of video calling through MSN (don't want to use anything else), Microsoft Office and games.

 

[jonbravo77]

When you run Parallels from bootcamp, can you still share files between both OSes? I was reading forums and some say you can others say you can't. I may have misunderstood though.

Also, are there disadvantages in running parallels from bootcamp other than a the fact that you can't make your partition bigger? And it appears to be slower? (is this true?)

I'm not quite sure if I should just run it from bootcamp or not. I do play games occasionally to moderately.

If I do run windows XP from bootcamp how big should my partition be? And should I make it FAT32 if its under 32 gigs?

Are there advantages to NOT running it from bootcamp that would be worthwhile? I mainly want to install windows because of video calling through MSN (don't want to use anything else), Microsoft Office and games.

You can share files via Parallels, just have to turn on that feature, and the files will show up when you log into Windows using BootCamp.

With formatting Fat32 you will be able to share files through the mounted disk in OSX but there is I believe a 4gb file size restriction that can be shared. Also, if you install the MS Office suite and some games, you will run out of disk space fast.

The advantage would be almost instant access to Windows if you need to switch to it fast to get some work done in Office, or having it open to use your MSN that you want to. The disadvantage is Parallels doesn't use the native video drivers and it does run a bit slower and depending on how much RAM you let it use could run your OSX slower as well.

 

[Clly]

I meant the advantages and disadvantages of running parallels from bootcamp rather than as its own VM

Is the only real thing to decide whether i want to be able to boot windows native at the expense of a fixed partition capacity? Or run parallels not from bootcamp and not be able to run windows native but also not have a fixed hard drive capacity?

 

[Clly]

I think that last post was confusing.

I just want to know if I should run Parallels from bootcamp or not.

 

[MasterNile]

Well if you have parallels using bootcamp partition then you only have to keep up with 1 installation of windows, and the files will be the same whether you're either using bootcamp or parallels and you would only have to do a software update on one of them rather than on both of them.