Do I really need to have Snapshots?

I am running Parallels 7 on a MacBook Air, supporting OS 10.7.5 and Windows 7. The important thing to know is MacBook Air = very limited storage.

Parallels eats a big hunk of storage, more and more as it generates snapshots. With diminishing storage, I tried to delete one of three snapshots, but got a message saying I didn't have enough memory to merge them. I ended up deleting one through Omni Disk Sweep. Catastrophe. Won't bore you with the details.......but my MBA is now living at the shop, where I think the whole bloody thing is having everything reinstalled.

So here is my question: Can I simply turn off this Snapshot function? (If so, how?) What is the downside? My MBA is really only a secondary device -- I do most work at a Windows desktop. I use the MBA for traveling, going to meetings --mostly notetaking. The files I work on are backed up through Dropbox or Cubby. Some also live in an attached external hard drive (that storage problem). And I have another drive for TimeMachine backups.

And here is a related question: Does TimeMachine back up only the Mac side? Does it also bac kup the Windows VM?

 

Hi Elizabeth,

No you really don't need to use Snapshots. But you should make copies of your .pvm file perodically on an external hard drive/thumb drive in case you damage your vm. I use a external drive for these back up I replace old copies of the .pvm file with new ones. This will take a little more time, but will save you from having to reinstall the os from scratch, and any extras that you have installed.
To turn off the automatic creation of Snapshots with Parallels open and your vm selected but not on:
Virtual Machine>Configure>Security>UnCheck SmartGuard.

 

Hi Kat--
Many thanks for this! I hope you'll forgive the newbie nature of these follow up questions about saving copies of the .pvm.

The .pvm file lives on the Mac side, right? So does TimeMachine make a sufficient copy? Or should I remove it from a TM backup (if so, how?) and just make my own copies from time to time on another drive?

 

Hi Elizabeth,

Yes your .pvm files are on your mac side their location should be either Users/<user>/Documents/Parallels or Users/Shared/Documents/Parallels. You can copy any past these to external hard drive attached to you mac or use Time Machine.
If you want to use Time Machine to create the backups knowledge base article for Optimizeing for Time Machine: http://kb.parallels.com/en/115052
and instructions for backing up your vms': http://kb.parallels.com/en/8827.