Can I run a boot camp partition and parallels separately?

E

edgarizwhoa

Bit poster
Hi,

I'm new to the whole Mac scene, and I have a simple question as to the functionality of Parallels. If I create a VM with one of my Windows Boot Camp partitions, does Parallels create a completely new OS? In other words, will I be able to go back and forth between Parallels and Boot Camp on that single Windows partition? And all changes I make in one will appear in the other?

Thanks.
 
yes

That is what I do. Sometimes I run into issues with the Windows Activation nonsense, but I never have a problem resolving it with MS.

It's a nice setup. I can run Windows productivity apps side-by-side with my Mac apps, and then use Boot Camp when I need some more oomph for 3D games and such :)
 
Yeah but whenever you switch back to boot camp, is it the same partition that you were using in parallels? For example, if I were to create a word document in XP through MS Word in parallels, and I shut off parallels and boot into boot camp. Am I able to access that same partition that has that word document I created?
 
edgarizwhoa said:
Yeah but whenever you switch back to boot camp, is it the same partition that you were using in parallels? For example, if I were to create a word document in XP through MS Word in parallels, and I shut off parallels and boot into boot camp. Am I able to access that same partition that has that word document I created?
Click to expand...

yes, assuming you are saving your Word document in your Windows partition (ie. in My Documents), it will be the same save for better performance and the occasional windows activation as johnak noted.
 
As johnak said its an awesome setup. It is the exact same partition, you can run windows update, install software, and save files in one and it will be the same in the other. With 3.0 this was working great, so far no luck with 4.0, just reverted back to 3.0 tonight.
 
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