How to auto-mount Windows drives on macOS

Discussion in 'Windows Virtual Machine' started by Waldgeist, Oct 16, 2018.

  1. Waldgeist

    Waldgeist Bit poster

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    I am regularly mounting my Windows drives as a network drive on macOS. What drives me mad is that I always have to do this manually, by accessing the drive via Finder's network environment. Only if I do that, the drive is mounted and can be accessed. If I just try to access it via a third party application (e.g. Visual Studio Code), it is not accessible and the applications report errors. Is there a way to auto-mount the Windows drives as soon as the VM is started?
     
  2. Arun@Parallels

    Arun@Parallels Parallels Support

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    Hi @tomb , please go to Configure > Options > Sharing > Share Windows > Check "Mount Windows drive on mac" . Once this option is enabled your Windows drive should be mounted every time when you start Parallels Desktop. If this doesn't happen. Please try to uninstall and reinstall Parallels Desktop for mac.
     
  3. Waldgeist

    Waldgeist Bit poster

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    Hi Arun, thanks for the fast response. I had this checked already. Will try a re-install now.
     
  4. Waldgeist

    Waldgeist Bit poster

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    Ok, I re-installed Parallels, but the problem persists. I cannot access the mounts via 3rd party applications (like VS Code) before I access them in Finder first.
    BTW: There seems to be an error in the German UI texts, too. The dialog tells me that mounted drives would be available under "Shared" in Finder's side bar. In fact, I find them under "Network".
     
  5. Please start the virtual machine, take a screenshot of the Finder window and reply with the same.
     
  6. Waldgeist

    Waldgeist Bit poster

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    This is how it looks like. I can see the Windows 10 VM under "Network", as well as the folders below it (C, One Drive). But they are not available to other programs (like VS Code) unless I explicitly open them in Finder. After that, everything works as expected. Seems as if a mount does not take place automatically and is only triggered if Finder accesses the remote folder first.
     

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  7. If the virtual machine's volumes are not mounted on Mac OS X desktop, go to Finder > Preferences > General and make sure that the Connected servers option is selected.
     
  8. Waldgeist

    Waldgeist Bit poster

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    As stated above, this option is already checked. Please find a screenshot of my settings attached to this post.
    I even re-installed Parallels Desktop from scratch.
     

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  9. Waldgeist

    Waldgeist Bit poster

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    The screenshot also shows that the German interface texts are misleading. There is no "Freigegeben" (Shared) area in Finder. Instead, I can find the VM under "Network".
     
  10. VivR

    VivR Bit poster

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    Was there any update to this issue. I'm also having the same issue.

    Have the finder preferences checked but only see the windows VM and its drives under the Network section after launching finder and navigating to the VM instance from network.

    It's also terribly slow to access the windows drives from OSX to the point of making it useless if its a git repo or so on.

    Drives mapped from OSX to windows works great. Just looking for a decent option for the reverse
     
  11. Did you try this KB article?
    Please let us know if it's not that case.
     
  12. VivR

    VivR Bit poster

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    hmm that article states it is to be used when the VM is turned off, so did not try that before.
    I did however just try that too after shutting down the VM just to test(in normal use I need the VM running too ofc).

    After launching the VM with parallels mounter(when the VM is off), does get me three drives listed in finder. Two that were recovery partitions and one which is my actual C drive in the VM. The mapped drive names were not correct. My C drive appeared as D in finder. not a big issue.

    In terminal under /Volumes they do not have the same mapped name as finder. Attaching a screenshot to show what I see in finder vs terminal.

    Ignoring the weird mapped names, if I navigate to the VM partition that is my C drive on windows, the main issue of performance is still terrible as soon as I navigate to any git repos or folders that are slightly large to the extents of simple git commands like status even take about a minute to execute. This is the the no deal problem that I'm not able to work around as I intended to use OSX as my development machine managing the git repos and switch into VM for testing. Right now I'm just not able to access and use the windows drives from OSX just due to its performance being terrible.

    I even tried setting my C drive as a network share and connecting to it via smb in OSX and the performance is still very very slow making it unusable.
     

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  13. HarkiratS

    HarkiratS Bit poster

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    T
    There appears to be no such option ("Mount Windows drive on mac") in Parallels Desktop 16 for Business edition. I also would like to enable this feature. Is there any solution to this in Desktop 16?
     
  14. Hello, we doesn't have the mount option in Parallels Desktop 16.
    You can connect your virtual hard drive as a second drive to another VM.
    Please check this out for more info.
     
  15. HarkiratS

    HarkiratS Bit poster

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    I am not sure how this helps? I need to auto mount the windows drive on my Mac so it is available as soon as the VM starts. Can you clarify with steps on hw to achieve this on Desktop 16. Thanks.
     
  16. PiyushK1

    PiyushK1 Bit poster

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    I am having the same issue mounting the windows VM drives programatically or automatically to mac when the VM is running. I am using Parallels Desktop 14 for Mac Business Edition. Is there any update on this? This is currently blocking me from writing deployment scripts on Mac from accessing the files in the Windows VM
     
  17. GrebenarR

    GrebenarR Bit poster

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    I also have this question. I have a script running every 15 minutes to sync files to mac from Windows:
    sudo -u user rsync -rt "/Volumes/[C] Windows 10/Users/Public/xx/yy/" /Users/Shared/xx/yy
    Unfortunately ""/Volumes/[C] Windows 10/" becomes available ONLY when I MANUALLY select it from Finder. Obviously I don't want to do that when restarting the computer. The virtual machine starts automatically in the background.
     
  18. bsh

    bsh Bit poster

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    I've been able to automate the mount on command line using this script:
    osascript -e 'mount volume "smb://Windows 11._smb._tcp.local"'
     

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