Parallels Desktop destroys its Windows installation on MacPro's secondary drive

Parallels Desktop destroys its Windows installation if Parallels
Hard Disk File resides on the MacPro's second internal Hard Drive.

I have a MacPro with two internal hard drives.
I thought it was a good idea to move Parallels Hard Disk File to
the secondary internal Mac drive
to save some space on the Mac's boot drive.

Don't ever think about this idea!
Paralles Desktop sooner or later will destroy you Windows Installation
and you will have to start installing Windows from scratch.

Parallels Desktop then, cannot start Windows anymore.
After the Windows boot screen, Parallels will halt and return to it's start screen.

This happens with several builds including build 1940.

Always let Parallels place its Hard Drive File on your internal
boot drive (Macintosh HD) and nowhere else.
This will definitely save your day.

PS After I copied the Parallels Hard Disk File - containing a working Windows
- from the second internal drive back to the internal boot drive, I had to
ACTIVATE Windows a second time through the phone!

 

I have been running my windows drive on the second internal non boot drive for quite some time without a problem. How long before this happened to you?

 

I seriously doubt that claim. There is no technical reason at all for this.

Maybe you are having a more generic problem with the 2nd harddrive? Is that an original, or did you buy your own? If the later, did you buy a Western Digital?

Frank

 

Something I see a great deal, not just among techies, but everywhere, is the tendency to assume that just because something happened after something else, the first thing was the cause. It's so common that there's even a well known (in some circles) Latin expression for it "Post hoc ergo propter hoc." (After this therefore because of this). Shorthand: Post hoc reasoning.

As often as not, it ain't so.

There is no reason a VM cannot be copied to ANY locally attached disk on a mac and run properly. Locally attached disks include all internal disks, USB disks, and Firewire disks, but not network drives, which use a different access mechanism (this actually applies to samba attached disks, but possibly not others).

Look for another cause.

 

I've been running paralels on a virtual machine saved to an external firewire drive on a mac pro for some time with NO issues. I agree that you probably have some other issue.