Physical hard DRives

Hello all!

New to parallels desktop 6. But so far I am enjoying this software on my Mac OSX.

I have installed windows 7 and all is working well, however-

I can see that I can share my folders (any folder or even 'physical drives'). But these 'shared folders' are only accessible through "Network" drives.

Are there any ways to map these drives to become a 'physical' drive on this Windows Virtual OS?

Hope there is, I hate accessing things through network drives.


Thanks in advance.



Instinct.

 

I've never experimented with an internal disk, but you can use external USB hard drives as dedicated physical drives. The only downside is that it can't be shared between OSX and Win while running.. (which is where the shared networking thing would be beneficial).

 

Thanks for the quick response Patrick.

And thanks for the heads up on the External USB drives, but the internal configuration was what I'm more interested in lol.

I really hope there is a way, I know Fusion 3 had it and it was very very handy.

 

if you enable file sharing on your mac, you should be able to map it as a physical drive

 

I'm not actually sure how you get into that screen .. can you please explain?

 

Ok I can get into that screen, but Still can't seem to map them as physcial drives.

can you do a step by step for this please?

Thanks for the response !=]

 

i just tried it and had no problems. here is what i did:

1. i am running my VM's network in Bridged Mode. i do not know if that makes a difference or not but it might since running in Bridged Mode makes it like two seperate computers on the network and Shared Networking might do something with the subnet or whatever. also i do not "Isolate" my mac from windows though i don't map drives / folders between the two.
2. went to system preferences -> sharing. i enabled "File Sharing" and in the advanced tab checked Share files and folders using SMB (Windows).
3. make a note of your mac's IP address. (in the sharing pane the numbers after smb://)
4. opened windows (i am using windows 7)
5. in the Computer explorer window, i clicked "Map network drive"
6. in the folder textbox i entered \\10.0.1.187\tonycarreon (10.0.1.187 being my mac's ip address and tonycarreon being my username's home directory)
7. in the Enter network password dialog, used my user shortname ( has no spaces *see below) and password.
the drive mapped just fine. i was able to get to the files on my home directory and all the folders as any network drive.

** a note about usernames:
the mac asks you to set up your name and that's usually what you log in as. for example, i log in to my mac with the username Tony Carreon, that's also the username i use in the dialogs that ask for permission to install software, change settings, etc. however my actual username is tonycarreon, which is what i would have to use when connecting from another computer or in this case mapping a network drive.

 

Thanks heaps for the response.


That is the issue I'm having, you have successfully mapped your drives as a 'network' drive on your VM windows 7, which is what I'm NOT trying to do (BTW i'm sure theres an easier way to do that with the features of Parallels).

I was trying to map those drives as 'physical' drives in Windows 7.

I.E


What you have>


"Drives"
Local Drive (C:/)


"Cd dRives"
DVD RW (D:/)


"Network Drives"
Folder Name (Z:/)


-----

This is what I want -


"Drives"
Local Drive (C:/)
My Drive (E:/)
2nd Hard Drive (D:/)


"Cd DRives"
DVD RW (F:/)


"Network Drives"
(none)


I Hope i'm not confusing anyone..


Thanks again.

 

i think i kind of understand what you're asking...

you want "Macintosh HD" to appear as D:\ on windows without having to actually map it.

no, that's not possible...

in reality, in Windows the C:\ drive is really a file that resides on Macintosh HD there's no real HDD behind it. so you can't then make Macintosh HD appear as a HDD in windows.

your closest solution is going to be what i offered. map the network drive to a letter.

 

The danger with physically attaching a drive is that it can then be attached to more than one real or virtual PC, with no means of controlling/synchronising who writes what to where. Network attach or USB overcome this problem, which will corrupt the hard disk in very short order.

 

Well unless you know what you are doing its not dangerous at all. Like I said I was using Fusion3 and it in itself had that capability which I was able to use without any hassles or problems. Then dual booting to another Windows I have on a different partition; nothing was wrong at all still.

So I take it Parallels don't actually have this support then?

 

Im new to Parallels 7 and was trying to accomplish the same as the OP. Maybe a year on something has changed....just wanted to check.

I discover if in the VM I configure a second hard disk I can add my macbook pro's 2nd internal HD as a PC hard disk (D in my virtual machine. Would be perfect but sadly it then disappears from my Lion desktop.

I have some old Windows tools I use that struggle with running on Network drives which is why I'm trying to connect as a standard hard disk drive.

Just wondered if there's any change since Jan 2011 and the move from v6 to v7?

thanks in adv
Ian

 

no change.

when you connect a drive to your virtual machine, it is no longer "connected" to your mac.

i assume you've tried mapping the drive to a drive letter in your windows machine (instead of using the VNC path) and it's not working - the "old" programs do not like it.

have you tried adding it as a shared folder (which mounts it in windows as a drive)?

 

Instinct,

It is not possible to connect the real hard drive to your virtual machine in Parallels Desktop unless it is USB hard drive.

There is an option to connect additional hard drive to virtual machine in Parallels Server, but again - not the Mac hard drive but some other hard drive as a storage.

You can connect second virtual hard drive to your virtual machine and it will appear as a second hard drive in My Computer - but i am sure that's not what you want.

About dualboot - you can install Windows to Boot Camp partition and use it in Parallels. While boting into Boot Camp natively, Mac,s hard drive would appear as a second hard drive - but in read only mode. If start Boot Camp via Parallels - Mac's hard drive will appear as a second drive again.

So the simple answer - no, it is not possible.

 

Thanks Tony, I suspected as such.
I'll try the method you mention tomorrow and let you know.

thx
Ian

 

Ian,

Just for your information, regarding this advice of Tony:

It is a usual and default way Parallels map Mac's drivers to Windows - and it is called Parallels Shared Folders. It works as network drive - not physically connected hard drive.