Parallels Qs

[chasm]

1. where is the Parallels Forum which should be on Parallels.com? or does this forum have a Parallels employee as a member to answer questions??
2. Can I create a VM on a second (3d or 4th) HDD on my Mac Pro? I have just added two 400gb HDD already formatted for XP which I would like to use as a data repository for the XP software on the stock mini HDD (250gb?) AND to back up the XP data.

thanks

 

[aristobrat]

http://forum.parallels.com/

You should be able to create a VM on any disk that you Mac can write to. If your "XP formatted" disks are formatted as NTFS, OS X won't be able to write to them.

 

[chasm]

VM on an entire hard drive

http://forum.parallels.com/

You should be able to create a VM on any disk that you Mac can write to. If your "XP formatted" disks are formatted as NTFS, OS X won't be able to write to them.

so, what you are saying is that I still have to have OS-X on any HDD which I create a VM partition for??
iow, I am still not getting to where I want to be.
eg, being able to have my OS-X on Drive A and my VM kernel on Drive A and all the gb's of data for the VM on drive B -- is not going to happen??

or, it will if I reformat the drive to what??

I think that what I am wanting to do is to dual boot or boot camp as Mac calls it with Parallels serving as a liaison between the OS-X drive and the XP drive. sort of using Parallels as the Alt+Tab or Function+Tab transfer. I wonder if that will ever happen??

thanks

 

[Drewswa77]

Is it me or is the entire parallels site down right now? (tues afternoon)

 

[chasm]

Parallels Website Down

http://forum.parallels.com/

You should be able to create a VM on any disk that you Mac can write to. If your "XP formatted" disks are formatted as NTFS, OS X won't be able to write to them.

Is it me or is the entire parallels site down right now? (tues afternoon)

Checking the various threads and forums, I see that it has apparently been down since last week I think
Any way, it has been non functional since early Mon am.
cheers

 

[plinden]

Is it me or is the entire parallels site down right now? (tues afternoon)

They're supposed to be releasing the final version today.

Anyway, to the OP. A VM will contain virtual hard drives, which to OS X will just look like any other file, with the file extension .hdd. These .hdd files will contain any XP applications you install, but their contents are not available when Parallels is not running.

You can put the VM files including the hdd files on any external drive, but the drive must be formatted FAT32 or HFS else Parallels will not be able to write to them. If they are not FAT32 or HFS formatted, XP running within Parallels will not be able to write to its own internal virtual hard drive since such write operations have to go through OS X to modify the hdd file, even though the hdd will look like it's NTFS to XP running inside the VM

If you have an external NTFS USB drive (Parallels doesn't support firewire yet, but there's a way around that using shared folders), I believe XP will be able to see and write to them but you won't be able to write to them from OS X. I'm not sure about that since I only have a firewire drive attached, and I can only write to it within the VM when I mount it as a shared drive.

 

[chasm]

Anyway, to the OP. A VM will contain virtual hard drives, which to OS X will just look like any other file, with the file extension .hdd. These .hdd files will contain any XP applications you install, but their contents are not available when Parallels is not running.

You can put the VM files including the hdd files on any external drive, but the drive must be formatted FAT32 or HFS else Parallels will not be able to write to them. If they are not FAT32 or HFS formatted, XP running within Parallels will not be able to write to its own internal virtual hard drive since such write operations have to go through OS X to modify the hdd file, even though the hdd will look like it's NTFS to XP running inside the VM

If you have an external NTFS USB drive (Parallels doesn't support firewire yet, but there's a way around that using shared folders), I believe XP will be able to see and write to them but you won't be able to write to them from OS X. I'm not sure about that since I only have a firewire drive attached, and I can only write to it within the VM when I mount it as a shared drive.

====

ok, not sure how this helps me as I am not sure that Parallels sees the two 400gb HDDs I stuck in the bays last nite. I have no problem reformatting them as FAT32 as wasteful as that may be but I am not sure how to make OS-X see an additional internal HDD as a "real/virtual (in this case they would be one and the same)" drive.

I just do not see it in the documentation and I cannot find a Parallels support person to answer the question. oh well, guess I will wait and eventually they will get the site back up and maybe they will answer their phones or email.

so far though, it is a pleasure to be able to press the function key + Tab and get it to pop up the instances of open software on both the Pro and the VM. nice. 3070 seems like a great improvement. just hope that they will solve the lack of 2.0 USB ports.

finally I wonder if the workstation backup or Compression will work on desktop also.

thanks

 

[aristobrat]

ok, not sure how this helps me as I am not sure that Parallels sees the two 400gb HDDs I stuck in the bays last nite. I have no problem reformatting them as FAT32 as wasteful as that may be but I am not sure how to make OS-X see an additional internal HDD as a "real/virtual (in this case they would be one and the same)" drive.

OK, a few thoughts.

First, your virtual machine only sees the hardware that you assigned to it when you created it. If you added two drives to your Mac Pro last night, then no, Parallels wouldn't have automatically detected them.

Second, the only way to add a drive to a virtual machine is to "Edit" the virtual machine, create a virtual disk, then add it. It's really easy to do. Then when you start your VM, Windows should detect the new virtual disk and give it a drive letter.

The problem there is that to OS X, virtual disks appear as a file. From OS X, you won't be able to open the virtual disk and get to the files. The only way to get to the files would be from XP.

If you want to have it so that your two 400GB drives are accessible from both OS X and Parallels at the same time, you might be better off using the "Shared Folder" feature. This lets Parallels directly access your OS X folders (that you specify). When you boot up XP, you'll have to click on the "Shared Folder" icon on the desktop, and get to your files that way. I think you can right-click on a shared folder and map it with a drive letter.