Firewire support coming?

Discussion in 'Parallels Desktop for Mac' started by HawaiiMacAddict, Apr 19, 2007.

  1. HawaiiMacAddict

    HawaiiMacAddict Bit poster

    Messages:
    7
    Aloha everyone,

    I tried to search the forums for firewire, but I didn't notice anything dealing with Firewire support in Parallels. Has there been any word on when, or if, Parallels will support Firewire?

    Let me lay out my situation for you. I have been using my MacBook Pro at work for the past several weeks (I am a contractor with General Dynamics, working on a government contract at the Battle Command Training Center, Hawaii). While I understand that I am technically not allowed to use my personal laptop at work, I developed a an inventory databse in MS Access, primarily using Parallels. My boss has stopped by several times, and is quite impressed with my MacBook Pro - to the extent that he asked me to provide a price quote for the purchase of one for the office (that way I can officially use a Macitosh at work). We also have a Maxtor terabyte drive with Firewire 800, 400, and USB 2.0 ports. I can use the terabyte drive to back up any Access projects I am editing, as well as the source for Ghost sessions. I currently have to boot into Windows via Boot Camp to access the terabyte drive for Ghosting sessions.

    The primary question is whether Firewire support is upcoming for Parallels. Secondarily, if anyone has a Maxtor terabyte external HDD, once it is formatted specifically for Windows, knowing that a Macintosh computer can't even mount the drive, can it still be used in Windows via Parallels? I have currently replaced my Wndows laptop with my MacBook Pro, but would like to access the external terabyte HDD while a Mac OS session, rather than booting into Windows.

    Mahalo in advance for your responses,

    HawaiiMacAddict
     
  2. darkone

    darkone Forum Maven

    Messages:
    804
    I cant find the post or blog entry where it was said, but i'm sure i read they werent planning on firewire support in parallels. Maybe someone can prove me wrong tho..

    If you format the drive fat32 tho, you can mount it under osx and then add it as a shared folder in parallels.
     
  3. nycruza

    nycruza Hunter

    Messages:
    224
    A bit convuluted :)
    Short answer:
    Any dirve that can be seen by OSX can be seen and used by Parallels.
    The difference is that Parallels will not mount the drive but see it as a shared folder.
    However, you can via Windows map the folder as a drive.
    Hope this is what you were looking for.

    ajm
     
  4. nivenh

    nivenh Member

    Messages:
    51
    i'd really like firewire support.

    doing kernel debugging from my parallels VM to a PC would be much easier if firewire was there. though i do admit, i don't see much use outside of that.
     
  5. HawaiiMacAddict

    HawaiiMacAddict Bit poster

    Messages:
    7
    Aloha everyone,

    Thanks for the replies. I guess I'll just have to continue to use Boot Camp and wait to see what Leopard has to offer (maybe some sort of virtualization is in store - one of the "Top Secret" features, indeed!). The issue I've had is that Maxtor has made the Windows-formatted drive unmountable in Mac OS, although I'm not sure how that was done. I remember the program asking me if I wanted to format the drive for Mac OS or Windows and just assumed that it would be formatted as NTFS - I guess not.

    HawaiiMacAddict
     
  6. darkone

    darkone Forum Maven

    Messages:
    804
    i think the real problem you need to solve is why the disk wont mount under osx. Its just a device to the operating system, and as long as its formatted to a format it can read, it should be mountable. When you were asked if you wanted to format for OSX or windows, this will have only chosen HFS+ or fat32/ntfs, it would not have "blocked" the other os from seeing the drive. (unless of course you had selected OSX, cos windows cant read hfs+ partitions).
     

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