After replacing main hard drive, lost all Virtual Machines

P

pDavid

Member
I have an iMac with latest version of OSX and latest version of Parallels Desktop. The main disk drive (Macintosh HD) of this iMac failed.

I have restored (Time Machine) all of my files to an external disk drive. I am operating the iMac from this disk drive, temporarily.

Parallels is working. However, if I attempt to start any of my Parallels Virtual Machines, I get a box with an error message:

Unable to connect Hard Disk 1. A file or device required for the operation of Hard Disk 1 does not exist or is used ....

How can I fix this problem? I assume that this problem will persist after I get a replacement hard drive installed.
 
Checking that you have your vms .pvm files..
Try navigating directly to the vms .pvm file for me it is:
Mac Hard drive>User>Shared>Parallels>if you have more than one vm the lvm files should list here.
For some users they may find the files under:
Documents>Parallels

Once you have found them you can open them.

But it is best/easiest to reopen them in Parallels selecting the correct path.
Open Parallels>From the top menu>File>open(this will open a finder navigation menu)>select your vm.
This will set the correct path.
If you are replacing your hard drive you may want to wait until your new hard drive is installed to open the vm in Parallels.
Because you will need to repeat the process of correcting the path to .pvm files.
 
Kat might have misinterpreted your problem as you have no problem finding and running the pvms. But he/she is right it is a path problem.

The paths that need to be corrected are the hard drives ones, you'll need to reselect the correct hd image in each vm. Configure > Hardware > Hard Disk 1.
 
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The paths are all correct in Parallels user interface. Also they are correct in the VM .pvs and .pvi files.

It is beginning to look as if my Time Machine backups are corrupted. However, the corruption is strictly limited to Parallels Virtual Machines. All of my other host (OSX) applications are working fine: web browsers, iTunes, calendar, address book, etc.

Another observation: I have tried selectively restoring virtual machine directories from several different Time Machine backup jobs. One of them yields a semi-working Windows 7 virtual machine. In fact, this VM works fine until Parallels attempts to re-install Parallels Tools into it.

The simplest explanation is that Parallels prevents Time Machine from making a reliable Time Machine backup of virtual machines.

How do you experts avoid this problem?
 
I've personally never used Time Machine to backup VMs. I just copy the pvm from time to time to an external drive.
 
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