I was hoping this would be fixed, but it still seems to be an issue. Parallels uses an exorbitant amount of disk space during running. I have a 768M machine, and 876M set aside for Parallels. For some reason during boot of the virtual machine, Parallels takes up 1.5G of space on my harddrive. O.k., I know it creates some annoying .mem file, but even with the 876M set aside, that is still over 600M that is unaccounted for. My understanding of the .mem file is that it can help restore from a suspended machine. I'm using Parallels off of BootCamp though, and my understanding there was you aren't supposed to suspend a machine anyway in this configuration, so why should it set this 1.5G aside? It delays the start of the virtual machine while it creates this space on disk. This should be an option, which if necessary for some users, should be able to be turned off for others. This problem ends up causing me two main issues: 1. If I'm doing other things on the system before launching Parallels, I get the unable to allocate Virtual Machine memory, even when I have over 2G available. 2. If i've gotten into Parallels, I often get an OSX prompt regarding the lack of space, and I need to kill an application. If I just close the window then it gets very annoying by popping up every couple of seconds. Running: MB Pro - Core Duo 2.16, 2G RAM Parallels 3150, RC2 Hard Drive - 80G Now the 80G drive may seem like a bit, but I have 30G set aside for the Windows partition to run numerous applications out of that. I can't really shrink that partition due what is loaded on that. I have numerous applications loaded into OSX. I do have external drives, but there are several files I need to keep with me, and lugging an extra hard drive everywhere I go is impractical. I move files off the laptop as I can, and am generally able to keep between 2 and 3 gigs free on the drive. This need for 1.5G of that space is abyssimal, as it frequently prevents me from using Parallels, and thus counters the benefits Parallels often provides. I do love Parallels, and have been using it since it's first beta. My drive however isn't as happy with it, and there is little I can do to clear any more space in an ongoing basis. This excessive use of drive space needs to be resolved. Both windows and the Mac have memory management and virtual memory already, so between not being able to suspend a bootcamp, and existing virtual memory management within the host and guest OSs, I have absolutely no idea why Parallels would need to set aside a gig and a half of space.
Thanks - with all the vm's I've spun up I'm facing gridlock on the existing drive. Did you do the hardware install yourself? I think it would be a good youtube video to demo how it's done.
Yes, I did it myself. A video would be nice, and probably exists somewhere already, but it's pretty easy. Pull the power and battery and memory access cover. Leave the top closed. Take out the tiny phillips screws that hold the case together (4 in the back, the ones along the sides, the ones in front of the battery compartment, and a couple if Torx screws under the memory cover). Then open the screen, and lift the back of the top plate. Work your fingers or a spudger toward the front and gently pop the clips along the front edge. Disconnect the keyboard etc. ribbon cable. Remove two screws along the right side of the disk, peel off the stuff stuck to the drive, and wiggle it out far enough to disconnect the connector at the rear. Remove the brackets and put them on the new drive, and wiggle the new drive into place. That is the hard part -- be gentle and have lots of patience. Then reverse the disassembly procedure. Watch out for the magnet in front -- it grabs the tiny screws you are trying to put back at the front of the battery compartment. BTW, doing a video would require taking it apart again (and getting a video camera) so I'm not going to do that. Have fun.
Heh - don't blame you Last question. Did you have any way to preservere and migrate your existing installation to the new drive or did you have to start from bare silver and re-install?
If you have a spare drive, then you can just use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! to clone you existing drive first. Then after swapping in the new drive, clone it back to the new one. I use this technique for upgrading my Ti800 hard disk three times.
Thanks, CZ. I should mention I have a laptop so I can't help but think this would complicate things. I haven't been using Macs long enough to know about the low level details - this is a trivial exercise in other Unixes when hardware limitations isn't a problem. I'll explore CCC and see what is possible.
I did the same thing. There is a step by step tutorial: http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Mac/ With great pictures and all. Also, so as to not throw out the drive, I got a bus powered case from OWC and placed my original in that. Then I did a clean install of the OS, and ran the migration assistant to get everything over. I have used CCC in the past, but wanted a clean install this time. You can easily boot from your original disk in the external case and then clone it over to the internal. Hope that helps. Took about half an hour for the install. Watch out for the little tabs in the front of the machine when pulling off the cover. The MacBook is WAY easier than the MacBook Pro for wrk like this...
I use SuperDuper for regular backups. I put the old drive in a Firewire case, installed the new drive, booted from the old, now external, FW drive, and did a "backup" to the new drive (after formatting it), shut down, pulled the FW plug, restarted, and was back in business with a bigger disk.
I found Synchronize Pro worked quite well. Created the bootable external HD for me on the first iteration.
How many RPM? I like the space of those larger drives, but they often run too slow for to multi track video and audio editing.
