Disk geometry error and NTFS vs. FAT32

W

WinMac

Bit poster
Okay, I know we can figure this out. For some reason there is something going on with Parallels and FAT32 (MS-DOS format) in MAC and NTFS. I couldn't get Parallels transporter to migrate a system over the network, so attached USB/Firewall drive direct to the system where I wanted to write the disk image. It failed over what seemed like 20 tries at exactly around 5%. After I deleted the partition (under native windows) reformatted and set to NTFS it worked like a charm for all 35GB's.

However, now a new problem. When I try to copy or modify the image or VM configuation on my iMAC I get error in reading/determining disk geometry. In addition, I have another FAT32 parition on the USB/Firewire disk and when I try to copy the 35GB image to the other (NON, NTFS-formatted) partition I get an error after about 5% done.

Since these two issues seem to match up, is there some sort of limitation of Parallels/MAC to write or edit large data files on NTFS. Also FAT32 might be having some problems with Parallels trying to write large datafiles. This isn't supposed to be true since Windows and FAT32 allows up to 2 Terabytes partitions/address space.

Can someone give a brief description of the steps to migrate a system, file systems used (FAT32/NTFS), etc.

Thanks,
Michael
 
WinMac said:
Okay, I know we can figure this out. For some reason there is something going on with Parallels and FAT32 (MS-DOS format) in MAC and NTFS. I couldn't get Parallels transporter to migrate a system over the network, so attached USB/Firewall drive direct to the system where I wanted to write the disk image. It failed over what seemed like 20 tries at exactly around 5%. After I deleted the partition (under native windows) reformatted and set to NTFS it worked like a charm for all 35GB's.

However, now a new problem. When I try to copy or modify the image or VM configuation on my iMAC I get error in reading/determining disk geometry. In addition, I have another FAT32 parition on the USB/Firewire disk and when I try to copy the 35GB image to the other (NON, NTFS-formatted) partition I get an error after about 5% done.

Since these two issues seem to match up, is there some sort of limitation of Parallels/MAC to write or edit large data files on NTFS. Also FAT32 might be having some problems with Parallels trying to write large datafiles. This isn't supposed to be true since Windows and FAT32 allows up to 2 Terabytes partitions/address space.

Can someone give a brief description of the steps to migrate a system, file systems used (FAT32/NTFS), etc.

Thanks,
Michael
Click to expand...

There is one major limitation of FAT32 comparing to the NTFS (except access rights management of filesystem level) - maximum file size on the FAT32 partition is 4GB. This is a pain, aspecially in case of large VM images wich are likely to grow above this limit quite often.
I guess that a lot of your problems are related to your problems. I'm wondering why didn't you get any error wornings that did help you to resolve your issues...

Anyway, did you finally migrate your VM ? If not, at what step did migration fail at your last attempt?
 
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