best way to mount 2nd internal hard drive?

I have a macbook pro with two internal drives: a fast SSD drive for the operating system (Mac and Win7 virtual) and a larger 750 GB data drive, which I'll use both with the Mac and Windows. What is the best way to get Win7/Parallels to see all or part of this 2nd drive?

I've already tried setting up a Windows data folder on the 2nd hard drive and mounting it from Windows/Parallels Guest as a shared folder. The problem is that Windows sees this as a network drive, and for using it as my primary data folder ("My Documents"), there are a number of inconveniences: sometimes the drive letter changes (from Z: to X: depending what else is plugged in, the files aren't indexed by Windows so I have to switch back to Mac to do a search, and the files system on a network drive isn't responsive -- doesn't always update listings after copying files, etc.

Is there a better solution for setting up a responsive data ("Documents") folder on a 2nd hard drive to be accessed by Parallels? Is setting up a 2nd virtual drive the answer? Just want to get an idea before I start moving data around. Thanks!

Brad

 

I haven't had any feedback on this posting -- which is surprising given how often this situation must occur (wanting to mount a 2nd internal hard drive). I have a fast (but small) SSD for my system drive, and a slower (but large) standard drive for my data.

The approach I've been using is ok: simply share a folder (such as "windows data") from my large Mac partition -- Windows (guest) will then see this as a network drive ("Z:"). It's a little cumbersome though since network drives aren't as responsive (they're not indexed, so Windows can't search on them, they can't be referenced by Windows 7 "Library" items, etc.

I talked with someone in Parallels support today, and think I'm going to try this approach: partition my large 2nd drive with a FAT32 partition from Mac Disk Utilities -- and don't reformat it as NTFS. Supposedly Windows (guest) will be able to see this. I'm hoping it works.

(Ideally, I could partition the 2nd drive as Mac OS and NTFS, but Parallels doesn't seem to recognize the NTFS. I'm still open to suggestion from anyone else reading this)...

 

same situation

hello.
i m in the same situation.
hoppe will find a solution.
your solution seems to be enough for me but i don't know how did you get that .
can you explain me what you did in order windows "see" you 2nd hard drive ?( the letters problem is not so big problem for my use )

thx & good luck