Using 20" iMac 2.0Ghz 2Gb ram . . . I have been using BootCamp on a separate partition, jsut a standard install with Win XP for various programs I have to run -- Yesterday I installed the new Parallels and hooked it up to the standard BootCamp install, so that I boot to OSX and run a VM that uses the BootCamp install for Win XP Tonight I migrated my BootCamp install to a VM on Parallels, so now I have three options: 1) Use Windows in BootCamp by boot to that partition. 2) Use Windows in OSX via Parallels and a VM that uses the BootCamp install partition. 3) Use Windows in OSX via Parallels in a VM that has "migrated" my BootCamp install to Parallels. Could someone give me pros and cons for using these three? I originally went with the BootCamp partition because I thought it might be safer, less likely to crash and lose data. I'm wondering now if the Parallels that uses the BootCamp partition is safer or less safe than the other two? Also, what about speed? I haven't had much time to test, but it seems that the straight BootCamp (partition) install is fastest, and the VM that uses the BootCamp partition is the slowest--does this seem generally correct? And are there links to other places here or elsewhere where this problem is discussed? Many thanks.
Using "BootCamp" to re-boot your Mac into Windows (i.e. not using Parallels) will give you the best performance and compatibility by a long chalk. Basically, you are using a regular PC with the same hardware specs as your Mac. Currently, this is the only way that windows can use more than one CPU core, properly support multiple displays or use 3D accelerated graphics. Even if Parallels supports some or all of these in future there will always be a significant overhead involved in running windows in a virtual machine, you will always need to share your RAM between the host and guest OS, and there will always be "more to go wrong" in terms of software and hardware compatibility. The dealbreaker is that you have to re-boot to switch between OS X and Windows and permanently assign a fixed proportion of your hard drive to Windows. You'll also either have to use old-fangled FAT32 instead of NTFS for your windows filesystem, or buy a 3rd-partly utility like MacDrive - because OS X can't write to the (MS proprietary) partition and Windows can't read the OSX partitions at all. The overriding advantage of Parallels is that you can run Windows "inside" OS X without rebooting and use all the file sharing features, cut & paste, drag & drop etc. You take a big performance hit for thios , but the result is still more than adequate for most purposes other than up-to-date games* or other resource-hogs. As for Parallels-booting-from-bootcamp vs. Migrating-to-boot-camp: If you don't need the full performance of Boot Camp, migrate and reclaim your Boot Camp partition. You get more flexible disc management (the parallels virtual disc only takes what it needs, BootCamp is fixed and hard to change) suspend/resume of the virtual machine and (again) there is less to go wrong. Parallels-booting-from-bootcamp lets you keep a foot in both camps, but (quite honestly) is a bit of a kludge - as far as windows is concerned the machine it sees in Bootcamp and the machine it sees in Parallels are radically different. Kudos for Parallels for making it work at all, but the idea gives me the screaming heebeejeebees. OK, so that's just an opinion. Last time I looked, Parallels wouldn't support my multi-partition not-exactly-bootcamp set up anyway. Best solution is to have both - a parallels-only installation for office/productivity type work and a boot-camp installation for gaming or intensive Windows-only sessions. This is not a big deal with current hard drive capacities/prices. It does mean that you need to maintain two sets of installed software, which may be complicated by pesky activation systems (but AFAIK parallels-from-bootcamp only fixes this for windows itself) but you don't (e.g.) need to install your games on both. Whether you need to buy two copies of Windows to legitimately do this is beyond the scope of this document. *like Windows Vista
Many thanks for this clear and interesting reply. Just the kind of thing I was looking for. At present I have 4, make that 5 setups on my maching 1) OSX 2) win/Bootcamp 3) win/Bootcamp in Parallels VM 4) win XP (the bootcamp setup migrated) in Parallels VM 5) win Vista in a new Parallels VM I am thinking this is too many setups and will cut back tonight. But to what I cannot yet say. Thanks for the excellent reply.
