Automatically migrate/clone Windows installation by copying

[sweikart]

Many people have asked for "Boot Camp support"; I assume they want their Parallels Desktop to treat their BootCamp-installed version of Windows as a Parallels virtual disk. As described at http://forum.parallels.com/post18947-4.html, this seems quite difficult.

I would like a related feature, that's much easier for Parallels to implement: when I create a new Parallels Virtual Machine, I would like it to migrate/clone existing partition(s), by copying them into a new Parallel's virtual hard disk.

You could use this feature to have Parallels copy an existing BootCamp-installed version of Windows. The procedure is described at http://forum.parallels.com/post16321-6.html, including a clever floppy-disk-image boot-setup (so you don't need to use the MS Windows repair console or reinstall updates).

In my case, I would like to tell Parallels to "create a new Virtual Machine, and create a virtual hard disk that contains copies of the following two partitions", which are C: and D: on a USB-connected disk drive. That way, I can pull the hard disk out of a Windows computer, put it into a USB disk-enclosure, plug the USB disk into my Mac, and "re-create" the Windows computer as a Parallels Virtual Machine.

-scott

 

[tgrogan]

Nice request but it ignores the capabilities of all of the other virtualization products that cannot also do this either. The fundamental problem is not 'copying the disk' - it is getting windoze to work after the copy. For anyone who has installed windoze on many machines and/or tried to use a system disk from one machine on another one, they know that this is not a simple gui interface copy problem. The problems are inside of the windoze installation and not the inability of Parallels to implement this 'copy'. This short description doesn't even begin to address m$'s efforts to protect it's (minimal intellectual) property rights by intruding on your computer's hardware configuration. This battle has been fought for nearly 10 years before the mac became windoze aware. I am unfortunatly dependent on m$ for my livelyhood and have resisted it every way possible from OS/2, Wine, Crossover, Win4Lin, VMware, etc. Thinking that a simple utility from Parallels can somehow emerge is futal. They are very good at what they do, but m$ has tried since win95 to defeat any efforts of this type, and the next version will be worse.