Some questions about flattening snapshotted virtual hard drives (VHDs) I have a VHD (running windows, not that it matters) with snapshot support enabled under Parallels 3.0 4560... The package (winxp.hdd) contains the following files: DiskDescriptor.xml winxp.hdd.0.{85941b29-ddd1-4edc-b5bb-277a0318db5a}.hds (Jul 13 02:20) winxp.hdd.0.{f1c9793f-e996-4850-a54f-f783cd4616d8}.hds (Aug 22 16:33) winxp.hdd.0.{196e7e9d-081e-4a71-94ba-6514a1b39454}.hds (Aug 31 13:54) winxp.hdd.0.{5fbaabe3-6958-40ff-92a7-860e329aab41}.hds (Aug 31 13:57) After I created installed windows on the virtual hard drive (vhd), I created the July 13th snapshot. Then I installed some software and took the Aug 22nd snapshot. Then I moved just the winxp.hdd folder, but not the Snapshots.xml and Snapshots folders. The Aug 31 snapshot i took after moving the file to the new machine. Only the August 31 is available from the user interface in parallels. So here are my questions: 1) Is there anyway to flatten it so that it's all just in one base snapshot? (and no wasted space) 2) Can I just create entries in Snapshots.xml and create corresponding files in the Snapshots directory? Are there any problems with this? (My snapshots are all in a shutdown state). And one for the Parallels team: 3) Why aren't the snapshot XML and folder inside the .hdd image? That way it'd be much easier to move it around. Perhaps merge DiskDescriptor and Snapshots.xml or something. At least enough so that you can actually work with them.
