backing up VM and Windows 7 on the Mac?

[jonathan_david]

hi all.

i am trying to figure out what my options are for backing up my Windows 7 install and/or my Virtual Machine. Since i don't keep any data on this side of the machine i would be only backing up the OS/Parallels but this is obviously important in and of itself.

does anyone know the options for this?

i have added the parallels VM to my TIME MACHINE backup as something to /exclude/ because i am told that this causes the backup HD to fill up exceptionally fast but i do have CLONES that i run periodically.

does anyone know what my options are here? also, what is a snapshot?

TIA

 

[l33t_c0w]

As far as backups, there's nothing wrong with keeping it simple; I just use rsync to copy my entire Documents directory to another computer every now and again when Parallels isn't running. At minimum, I'd imagine you would want to make copies of any relevant .hdd files. You could then recreate a given VM later, and just point it at a copy of the backed up hard drive(s).

A snapshot is the state of your VM at a particular time, saved. As far as I know, the way it's implemented is that all changes made after a snapshot are saved separately from the changes made before then, so that at any point, you can safely delete the post-snapshot changes in isolation (that would be the process of reverting to an earlier snapshot). Parallels will also save a copy of the VM's RAM contents, if the VM is running when you make the snapshot.