Physical Disk Access?

I'm interested in building a NAS device in virtualization, but while I'm fine installing the quest OS into a virtual image, I would like to give the guest direct, physical (RAW) access to some connected SATA harddrives in my Mac Pro. Is this possible with Parallels Desktop (or the new Server?)? Additionally, is it possible to use Parallels Desktop to boot a non-Windows OS installed on a separate physical, non-bootcamp partition in my system? I know some RAW features are supported by VMWare through the CLI and not GUI, but I haven't been able to find anything for Parallels. I've read some conflicting informations as to what exactly is supported by Parallels Desktop 3, so I decided to ask. Thanks for your assistance.

 

Three years and no response. Hmm..

I'm guessing that it technically is possible because Parallels supports using the Bootcamp partition, which is exactly this concept. But I'd really like to know if you could point it to any device.

I've used the raw device feature in VM ware and it's a nice option to have.

In particular, I'm looking at raw devices which are created as sparse volumes from ZFS which means that you can do drive level snapshotting from ZFS, which may have performance benefits. Certainly backup benefits - being able to back up differences in a guest's drive is much more efficient than backing up the entire .hdd file every day!

 

Forget it. The Parallels tools can't be installed for some reason if the guest is on a NAS HDD.
There is no support and no one looks inside this forums. I purchased both - VMWare and Parallels (on Parallels i have 2 licenses - what a waste of money ! ).
I will switch back to VMWare because of this. I simply have no place left on my SSD to save 6 windows instances (each 30GB = 180 GB and the SSD has 240 GB size).