Followed KB article 123981, now shared Mac drive has 'wrong' drive letter

[Billymac231]

Hi all.

I've recently moved my Parallels pvm from Bootcamp partition to my main Mac hard drive. For a fortnight I'd been wondering why my Mac was running so slow, and last night I 'discovered' what had been in plain sight all along: macOS was trying to upload 60-odd GBs of Parallels folder onto iCloud...

Okay, so I followed the KB article on shifting the Parallels folder out of Documents, and I moved it exactly where the article suggested, to a newly created folder in my user folder.

Windows 7 runs fine from there, but...

I have the data file for one particular Windows program that I run deliberately in my Mac Documents folder, because I do want that one file uploading to iCloud and backed-up by Time Machine etc.

Before I moved the .pvm file the location of that data file showed up in the left-hand pane Windows Explorer as 'foldername on 'Mac' ( X: ), and the program that uses it was duly pointed to that location and worked fine. Since I moved the .pvm file the folder in question now shows as 'foldername on 'Mac' ( Z: ), and consequently the program cannot locate it. I have no idea why it changed from X to Z after the file move...

I cannot redirect the program to the new location of it's data file, because it will not run if it can't find it's associated data file, (Catch-22!), and so I think I need to change the Z back to an X. I have tried using disk management in Windows, but because it's a (virtual) network drive it doesn't show up in there to have it's drive letter changed.

Can anyone help me please?

Cheers,
Rob

 

[Shathish@Parallels]

Hello @Billymac231 Parallels Support Here! We would request you to follow the below steps and check it helps.

1. Open VM Configuration http://kb.parallels.com/117287
2. Go to Options > Sharing.
3. Be sure that 'Share folders:' option is set to 'Home folder only'.
4. Uncheck checkbox 'Share cloud folders with Windows'.
5. Expand 'Advanced Settings' menu and uncheck checkbox 'Assign a drive letter to shared folders'.

 

[Billymac231]

Thanks Shatish.

I followed your instructions, but sadly they didn't work for me. When I had done as you suggested I found that I now had no drive at all in the left pane of Windows Explorer, and I needed an X: drive for the Windows program to find. (Rather bizarrely I did seem to acquire a 'quasi-drive' thing under 'Computer' in the left pane of WE that was entitled 'My web-sites on MSN'. How that got there is a mystery; I never visit MSN at all.)

Anyway, I reverted to what I'd had before, with the configuration exactly as you describe but without the box being unticked by 'Assign a drive letter...' in advanced settings. My shared folder now reappeared in WE, but with the drive letter 'Y', which was as useless as 'Z'. I needed it to be 'X'.

I now tried adding further folders to the 'Custom Folders' list in an effort to 'bump-up' the 'Z' drive into 'X', but that didn't work either. It seemed that every folder I added could have the drive letter 'X'... apart from the one that I needed to have it. Very frustrating...

And then something happened within the Windows program, and it somehow redirected itself to 'Y'. I have no idea how it did it; I had been trying to redirect it all afternoon, and then it seemed to just click and the program is working fine and using the file in the folder 'Y'. I'm not going to touch anything else now!

 

[alexg]

Billymac231, this mystique will end soon... sorry

How to assign the custom drive letter to a Shared Folder:

1. First of all uncheck "Assign a drive letter to shared folders" option.
2. Add Custom Folder to the Shared Folders
3. Open Windows Explorer and go to address bar and type \\Mac. See pic.
4. Select the Folder you want to assign a drive letter. See pic.
5. Right-click on this folder and select Map Network Drive... Wizard appears. See pic.
6. Map to a letter you wish.

That's all.

 

[Billymac231]

Thanks Alex.

As I said, though, I'm now touching nothing while I've got it working as I want it. But I appreciate the advice and I have made a note of it in case it stops working again.

Cheers.