Not possible to change OSX Guest from 64gb?

Discussion in 'macOS Virtual Machine' started by Cameron1, Feb 3, 2015.

  1. Cameron1

    Cameron1 Bit poster

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    I am trying to create a OSX Guest that is greater than 64 gigs. By default the only option for installing OSX is to let Parallels set it up for you, which creates a default hard drive of gb. After it is set up I have tried going in and resizing the drive. What happens is you get the following error: "Unable to resize the last volume. The file system on that volume might be corrupted or not supported." Afterwards the configuration lists it as the new amount, say 100gb but when you boot into OSX it is not.

    I have also tried using the command line tool to resize the drive and this also did not make it > 64 gb. "prl_disk_tool resize --size 300G --hdd harddisk.hdd".

    What are the correct steps to create an OSX Guest with a drive bigger than 64 gb? I am on Yosemite and Parallels 10.
     
  2. Cameron1

    Cameron1 Bit poster

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    I've gotten closer but not a full success. First you have to forget using the built in parallels option to create a virutal machine from your recovery partition. Instead create a new 100gb Windows 7 vm. For the install media go to the app store and download the Yosemite upgrade and select that. Parallels will tell you that it has to convert the app to a bootable image, allow it to do this. Next boot up Yosemite but before installing go to the Disk Utility and erase and format to the Mac journaled type. Finally install OSX.

    Issues I'm having now are:
    - Performance is ABYSMAL compared to a Win7 vm, I do have Parallel tools installed.
    - The display is showing the full retina size instead of the normal scaled size. I have tried looking in displays and in the VM config under displays. You can tell it not to use the "retina display" but then everything looks terrible.
     
  3. tannebil

    tannebil Junior Member

    Messages:
    10
    Made me crazy for a long time as well. The key is to create a new virtual disk of the desired size during the initial configuration. Create the new one, delete the preconfigured one, and away you go. There can be a long delay during OS X install where you will be tempted to think there is a problem but you just have to wait it out. Patience, grasshopper, patience.
     
  4. EmersonW

    EmersonW Bit poster

    Messages:
    4
    Thank you gents, especially tannebil! I was struggling with this for a bit too. I was thinking more along the lines that it had to be a fixed and not an auto-size virtual hard drive. So I set up a blank VM - but then it wasn't able to use the recovery partition, it would just boot to the boot loader prompt. Instead of continuing down that path (and downloading the Yosemite upgrade/installer), I found your advice, and I set up a new VM, left auto-grow on, shut down the machine after it auto-started the OS X installer, added a drive in the Parallel VM settings (had to be careful to just get in there and change the size once, I swear it seems if you click the same option twice it then throws the error about not being able to resize, and then you have to remove the drive and add it again), and voila, I started it up and verified both hard drives with the disk utility. Then it was a simple matter to just use the Time Machine restore instead of the setup's migration assistant!

    So it was not only nice to get it to work without going through the hoops of setting up an installer image, but also to find out it does work with auto-grow virtual drives after all! (or maybe I will find out after it completes restore that it doesn't work for some reason - but so far it is and has gone above the default <1GB size for sure, so it must have increased the size a few times already without incident) Some Parallels KB article from just several months ago seemed to make it clear that auto-size would not work with HFS-formatted partitions but I guess that is (luckily) no longer correct!
     

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