Parallels able to use external drive with OS loaded on it as if it were....

Parallels able to use external drive with OS loaded on it as if it were loaded into the Virtual Drive of Parallels. Currently Parallels requires the OS to be freshly loaded into the VM hard drive created by Parallels and then the programs needed within it to be loaded fresh as well. It would be really slick if Parallels were able to be pointed to another drive with the OS already loaded onto that drive and to be able to start it up within parallels and run it. Example - I have 2 SSD's in my laptop. I have a current up-to-date Apple OS on the main drive. On the second one I have an older OS loaded with Photoshop 5 and Illustrator 5 loaded into that one (purchased) because Adobe ceased support and the upgrading of them and went to a subscription model and I didn't want to throw away US$5000 (from years of purchases and upgrades) and start to pay a subscription for something I already had paid for. So my current work around is to reboot from that older OS and do what I need to in PS and AI and then close down and go back to my latest version OS for every day activity as it is more secure. But it would be nice if I could just use Parallels to fire up the older OS and run the PS or AI and not need to shut down and reboot. ....Why don't I just load in a new copy of the older OS I am currently using into Parallels? Because to load in PS and AI again would be extremely problematic - I had updated it from PS2 to PS3 to PS4 to PS5 and to reload it from the original disks would mean going back several OS' and then updating them all....

 

Hi @N&**, sorry for such a delay, this feature was added in Parallels Desktop 15 last year. You can now use physical OS installations on external disks as a Hard Disk for a VM.