Parallels 5 and compression issue

I recently upgraded to Parallels 5. I keep getting the message "Your disk needs to be compressed and will go from 33gb to 14gb". It restarts the VM (XP SP3), on the start-up screen shows compression of disk briefly, I log in, but no compression takes place. About an hour or so later, the same message appears and I seem to go round in circles and compression does not seem to take place at all.

I have also tried switching from Crystal to windowed mode and then manually start Compression, but same issue

My VM stays at 36gb and won't seem to compress

Any ideas?
Thanks

 

Anyone know if the speed of the VM will be reduced if we enable disc compression? I cant tell for sure or notice it much. Is there a way to uncompressed a drive. The reduction of disk space is nice but if I have lots of hardisk space, I dont want to give up those and compromise on speed. Could someone advise? thks!

 

Any luck with this? I too am having the same problem. Looks like these forums aren't too active

 

I'm having an issue compressing too. it says that my disk is corrupt or has snapshots. i don't have snapshots, and i don't THINK my disk is corrupt since i'm able to use it with no problems on a daily basis. i'm running osx 10.6.2 and parallels 5.0 with a vm of xp sp3. what else can i do? i've tried the image tool, but it says that it can't do anything because i don't have enough space on my hard drive. i've got 74 gb available....so....????

 

I logged a support call a few days ago (ID 960765) but I have received no response to date. I hope they will respond soon or read when users are posting on the forums.
Thanks
Rob

 

same issue

Has support ever resolved this issue? I need the 30gb of disk space back!

 

Not one word in response.... What excellent support !!!!!!

 

>>> Message has been deleted by the user <<<

 

Same problem, it only affects additional/secondary hard disks. The primary disk where the OS is installed always compresses fine but the compression dialog always says that it is not possible to compress the secondary disk. In Parallels 4 it was possible to do this manually with the additional utility but this no longer exists in version 5, which also appears to have eliminated Parallels Explorer.

I can understand why the compression program might have a problem with compressing the secondary hard disk, but if this is the case then it would really be useful to get back the old external compression utility and Parallels Explorer. I used both of them all the time and I wouldn't have upgraded if I had known they would be taken away from me... :-/

 

Hi,
for successful compression in might be required to run checkdisk on C and logical drive(s):
1. Right-click drive, select Properties
2. On Tools tab, click Check Now... button
3. Select both checkboxes and press Start
4. Restart Windows
5. Try to compress

To RobinS:
somehow we missed this thread. The ID you provided is problem report which is not considered as support request (and there is appropriate note about it when report is sent). If the issue still persists, let me know please.

 

This doesn't help at all, unfortunately. The problem is not that checkdisk needs to be run but that Parallels Compressor is incorrectly identifying the type of the secondary virtual disk: It displays an error message saying that it cannot be compressed because it is the wrong type or contains no files. Both these statements are incorrect, it is exactly the same type as the main virtual disk containing Windows itself and it contains plenty of files.

It would be great to either have a solution for this problem or get access to the old separate Parallels Compressor/Explorer utilities that made it possible to compress virtual hard disks on their own.

 

Still no resolution!

I have run checkdisk as you have suggested and I still get the same error message...both before and after the .9310 build update...


Could not compress the Hard Disk 1 used by the "Windows XP" virtual machine.

The disk is corrupt or has snapshots. Delete the snapshots and try again. If the problem persists, contact the Parallels support team for assistance.


PLEASE HELP ME AND THE OTHER USERS RESOLVE THIS

 

Hi jay schainholz,
please create support request here. If not possible for some reason, let me know and I will create support ticket for you.

 

Hi I-che

I'm having the same problem. Thanks for your suggestions. I tried check disk etc.

I've raised a support request. Somehow missed the confirmation email so can't give you a number...

Cheers,

Steve

 

Finally, one person, i-che, recommended using parallels image tools and merging snapshots...although this ran for two days and used up all my disk space (that i kept creating on the mac by deleting files), when i finally force quit (which they warn not to do) and reboot and ran compression, voila, 30gb of space reappeared!!!!

This after many very unhelpful responses from parallels support....

I'm glad to have this resolved, but parallels support responsiveness and training leave a great deal to be desired.

 

so does that mean you were without your VM for two days? That is a bit of a problem, especially since my wife and I have our own user accounts on my MB Pro and probably would not be able to switch while this runs.

I've submitted a ticket and will hope there is a faster solution.

 

2 days down and 3 weeks struggling with parallels 5

it was 2 days while image tools ran and ran...it had been 3 weeks since disk space was just being eaten by parallels---it was a constant battle to free space after parallels didn't have enough disk space...very unpleasant experience

 

Just compressed with Parallels 5, now BSOD in Vista

Error message says 'No controller for SCSI'.
Tried to repair with Windows Vista disk and got this message:
'Root cause found:
Boot sector for system disk partition is corrupt'
Every other repair tested okay.
Any thoughts?

 

I had the same issues with an older Win XP VM (converted from 2.5 to 3.x,4.x and 5). Parallels claimed that this VM could not be compressed due to existing Snapshots.

When looking in the .pvm Package the Snapshots folder was empty.
Opening the C.hdd package revealed several C.hdd.0{...} files.

The SOLUTION:
- Start Parallels Image Tool
- Open the VMs harddisk image
- Select "Change image properties"
- Uncheck all, but "Merge Snapshots"
- Continue ...

After merging, there is only a single C.hdd.0{...} file left in the C.hdd package.

Now open the VM and choose compress.

In my case the size was reduced from 79 GB to 23 GB !


-- Harald

 

Hi Harald,
thank you for sharing experience, much appreciated.