How to Back Up "My Documents" on C Drive?

I have files that can not be placed in the shared folder, they need to be exclusively located on the C drive on the Windows side of my Mac. How do I backup the "My Documents" folder (since I can't see it on the Mac)? Thanks.

 

Share the folder in Windows and use Samba in the Mac to mount the folder to the Mac file space. Or email as attachments them to your Mac system. Or ftp them to the Mac. Or install putty and sftp on the Windows system and sftp them to the Mac. Or share a folder on the Mac and attach that share in Windows, then copy the files into that shared drive. Install rsync for Windows and rsync the files to the Mac. Install a web server in Windows and copy the files into web space and use a Mac browser to get them from the Window server. Email them to your gmail account then open the mail with a Mac mail reader and save the attachments. Save them to a thumb drive in Windows then detach it and let OS X mount the thumb drive. Copy them from the thumb drive to an OS X folder. Or copy them from the Windows document folder to your Mac Shared folder that parallels installs.

 

Which of your solutions would you recommend if we are talking about 10gb of data in the My Docs folder?

I like the idea of saving them to a thumb drive (or portable hard drive). That would be a simple solution. But, when I plug my Thumb/Portable drive into my Mac, I don't see it on the Windows side (while looking under "My Comupter").

I have this problem of so much data on the Windows side because I have dozens web sites built in FrontPage that can not be accessed through the shared folder.

 

The shared folder that Parallels creates is already there so that would be a first choice. After that I would suggest an FTP network object in Windows as it works just like an Explorer drive window. You can drag and drop files into it and they will appear on the Mac file space.

In order for Windows to see the thumb drive you have to unmount it in OS X. Open Finder and locate the Thumbdrive - click the eject button. Now go to the Windows VM and in the Parallels menu choose Devices -> USB -> and select your thumb drive. Windows should attach it. Unattach it as you normally would in Windows before reconnecting it in OS X.

This may not work, depending on the version of Parallels you have installed. It did fine with build 1970, got broken in 3036, and was fine again in 3106 and above.

 

I keep all the data files I can in my shared folder, so they're backed up automatically whenever I back up my Mac files. If, as you state, you must keep files on your Windows C: drive, consider backing up those files, using Windows Backup Utility, to your shared folder.

For backing up application and local settings I created a backup job in Windows Backup Utility to back up those files to \\.PSF\Parallels Shared Folder\Documents\Backup Files and it works just fine. You can even schedule backups to run automatically.

Lew

 

Remember, your windoze "C" drive does not really exist. All files are on the Mac HD. So the easiest way to back them up is to follow the advice offered by "Lew" and simply not use the windoze "My Documents" folder. Instead, create a "windoze documents" folder in your OSX UserName/Home/Documents folder, designate that as a parallels shared folder and save everything there. Then it's easy to make additional backups on the Mac "side".

DD

 

Thank you all. The problem I was having was that I could not use the Parallels Shared Folder because of some compatibilty issues opening folders with Microsoft FrontPage (in Windows). Therefore, I thought I was going to have to leave all my website/FrontPage folders on the Windows side (and was wondering how I was going to back those up). But...I solved the problem by creating a new Shared Network Drive between the Mac and Windows (and bypassing Parellels Shared Folder in the process). All is well now because all my files and folders can still reside (and be backed up) on the Mac.

 

You can also map "My Documents" directly to any folder, including a network folder. I simply mapped "My Documents" to \\.psf\documents which is mapped to my \users\charles\documents folder. That way, apps on both sides see the same set of docs.

 

Simply remap the "My Documents" virtual windows folder to be stored on your Mac side through the shared folders system. Easy. Efficient. And no double storage.