After HD crash, Windows 8.1 installed. But my VM with all my data is Windows XP!

[Dee DeeS]

I am trying to recover from a hard drive catastrophic failure.
There were problems with the Time Machine backups, so doing a conventional restore from Time Machine is not an option.

On the old hard drive, we were running Mac OS 10.8.x (Mountain Lion), Parallels 9, and Windows XP. That is what the last [semi] good Time Machine has.
The new hard drive was loaded with Mavericks. Then Parallels 9 and Windows 8.1 were installed. My data from the old VM is not currently there.

If I copy the Shared folder from the Time Machine Backup to the Shared folder of the new live system, I will be copying the Windows XP.pvm that is located in the Parallels folder.

Will that bring back my data?

Please, anyone, Please!?
Thanks.

 

[HonzaIl]

I am bit puzzled on what all happened here, but in my experience if you copy Windows XP.pvm onto the new Mac disk and if it is not corrupted, you can open it in Parallels. I have few virtual machines including old WindowsXP (those are the Something.pvm files) and copy them between Mac drives without problems.

Then you can open the Windows XP.pvm in the Parallels and if the data are there, you can copy them on the Mac and then you can open the new Windows 8.1.pvm in Parallels and copy the data there from the Mac. You will need to go through the Mac or external drive as I do not think you can communicate between the two opened VMs. I can try that sometimes, but creating separate copy of the data somehwere is good idea.

Now, in long run there is better way of handling data and backups. Keep all data on Mac through the shared folders between the Mac and VM. Keep in the Windows VM only system and applications. Keep Mac backuped by Time Machine (I have two time machines located at different places). But take the VMs out of Time machine backups (they do not backup well) and create once in a while manually copy of the VMs (those pvm files) on external drive. Even the Time Machine disks can be used, but do it manually on some sensible schedule (like, when you installed something new and system works well). That way you have data in regular Time Machine backups and always good, working copy of your VM.

In my experience Time Machine disks are quite stressed and they do fail more often then usually used disks. The TM method of linking seems to be quite complex. I had to reformat each TM disk due to errors about once every two years. To be really sure you want to have at least two Time Machine backups and check them once in a while.

All disks die routinely. I have ~7 systems with may be ~20 disks together and deal with failed/bad disk (internal or external) about every 4-6 months. Do your math. I am paranoid with backups by now, disks are cheap, data expensive.