Help with Virtual Disks, etc

scalleia · Jan 22, 2007

Hi,

Sorry if this has already been addressed however I have searched the various forums and I am still confused. I am a new Mac user and have an iMac 24 with a 250gig internal drive and a 500g Firewire drive. I wish to run some windows apps. but want to preserve as much space on the internal drive for Mac apps. I have installed Bootcamp and created a 15gig Fat32 partition on my internal mac drive. I have loaded MS Win. XP Pro on this partition. I have then installed Parallels 3106 Beta and pointed it to use the Bootcamp install of Windows XP. I have also used parallels to create a virtual HD on the external firewire drive (sorry can't remember the size, but it was expanding), and this is called WinHardDisk2.hdd. I can see this if I use finder under mac and browse to the Firewire drive.

My desire is to run Parallels off the Bootcamp copy of Windows so that I don't have 2 installs of Windows on my HD (thus wasting space), and install Windows applications on the Parallels Virtual HD that is on the external drive.

Everything seems to work very well, and I must say I am thrilled with Parallels so far. Here are my questions/problems:

1) I cannot seem to see the virtual hard drive when in windows under parallels. When I install an app it is going on my Windows C: drive which is on the Mac HD partition. I cannot see the virtual drive either under MyComputer or Explorer when running windows VM. How do I resolve this ? Am I right in saying that I should be able to install virtual HD's on external drives and then actual applications on these virtual HD's ?

2) Given that I can do 1) above I assume then that any windows applications installed on the Parallels virtual HD will not be accessable when running Windows under Bootcamp. Is this correct ??

3) I am worried that my initial choice of Partition size and type (fat 32) may have been incorrect. Is this partition likely to become too small (it has 7.3g free at present), and I worry that Windows may require more. I know this is a hard Q to answer without me specifying what I intend to run under Windows. If I can install apps. on the parallels virtual HD then I guess this is not such a big issue, but if I cannot I can see it getting a bit tight. In peoples opinion would I be best to start again wioth a bigger Bootcamp partition before a re-install is too much of a pain.

Anyway thanks for your help/advice.

Cheers,

Simon

joem · Jan 23, 2007

You can run a bootcamp XP installation in a VM, and applications (and data) in a virtual disk, but you will not be able to see anything on the virtual disk while booted into bootcamp native.

If you plan to install all your applications on the external drive, it might be better to put the entire VM on the external drive because XP only takes up a couple of gig. Note that applications installed on a drive other than C will take up at least some space on C for registry entries, and possibly device drivers. Trying to save a couple of gig on a 500 gig external may buy you less stability if you have to run the same set of bits native (bootcamp) and in a VM.

If you create a virtual disk on your external and attach it to your VM, you will have to initialize it in disk manager just as if it were a new physical disk, create a partition, format it, and assign a drive letter.

FAT32 is a good choice for a bootcamp partition because you can read and write it from OSX.

You may find that XP will run in bootcamp better with the swap file turned off, especially if you have two gig of RAM installed (which you should for good Parallels performance). This will save you a couple of gig of C space.

scalleia · Jan 23, 2007

joem said:
You can run a bootcamp XP installation in a VM, and applications (and data) in a virtual disk, but you will not be able to see anything on the virtual disk while booted into bootcamp native.

I cannot see the Parallels Virtual Disk when running Windows within Parallels. I'm not sure I understand - are you saying that if I run windows within a Parallels VM that is booted off a Bootcamp partition that I can't see any other Parallels Virtual Hard Disks - that doesn't sound right to me. Maybe I am missunderstanding.

If you plan to install all your applications on the external drive, it might be better to put the entire VM on the external drive because XP only takes up a couple of gig. Note that applications installed on a drive other than C will take up at least some space on C for registry entries, and possibly device drivers. Trying to save a couple of gig on a 500 gig external may buy you less stability if you have to run the same set of bits native (bootcamp) and in a VM.

I thought that you 'HAD' to have windows installed on the local internal hard disk. I know you do for Bootcamp, but I thought you did for Parallels as well. In any case I wish to also use Bootcamp from time to time, and it would be best to have just the one copy of Windows from a maintenance point of view. Is this possible ?

If you create a virtual disk on your external and attach it to your VM, you will have to initialize it in disk manager just as if it were a new physical disk, create a partition, format it, and assign a drive letter.

Sorry for the stupid questions but what do you mean by initialise it in Disk manager. is this in Parallels or Windows ??

Thanks for you answers.

Simon

joem · Jan 23, 2007

scalleia said:
I cannot see the Parallels Virtual Disk when running Windows within Parallels. I'm not sure I understand - are you saying that if I run windows within a Parallels VM that is booted off a Bootcamp partition that I can't see any other Parallels Virtual Hard Disks - that doesn't sound right to me. Maybe I am missunderstanding.

If you boot native (running Windows on the hardware without OSX) you can't see anything on the OSX partition unless you run MacDrive (third party product) and in any case, your virtual hard disk files will not be accessible.

I thought that you 'HAD' to have windows installed on the local internal hard disk. I know you do for Bootcamp, but I thought you did for Parallels as well. In any case I wish to also use Bootcamp from time to time, and it would be best to have just the one copy of Windows from a maintenance point of view. Is this possible ?

You have to install the Parallels app on your boot disk. The rest, including VM components can be anywhere.

Sorry for the stupid questions but what do you mean by initialise it in Disk manager. is this in Parallels or Windows ??

Windows.
Creating and attaching a virtual hard disk is exactly like installing a new physical disk in a Windows machine. You can't see it anywhere but device manager and disk manager until you partition it and format the partition(s).

scalleia · Jan 23, 2007

Creating and attaching a virtual hard disk is exactly like installing a new physical disk in a Windows machine. You can't see it anywhere but device manager and disk manager until you partition it and format the partition(s).[/QUOTE]

Thanks that's done it!! Really appreciate your help