Import from external hard disk

[BrendanA]

My PC running Windows XP died years ago and I replaced it with a Mac Mini and put the hard disk in an enclosure. How can I convert the contents of the old PC (external) hard disk into a Parallels VM?

This is my setup:
Mac Mini with no hard drive space left
Old PC hard disk in enclosure (probably about 120 GB)
New 1 TB external disk for Parallels VMs (has a 30 GB Windows XP VM imported from Fusion)

 

[Parallels User]

This is complex. It would be simpler if you could boot the pc and install Parallels Transporter Agent on it. But you can't.

I've done this myself by using an existing Windows VM and attaching two extra virtual disks to it, one will be the virtual hard disk image for the new VM (you have know how to dig inside the VM packages and now how to move virtual disk images between VMs), the other will be the real drive of the old computer, seen as a bootcamp partition for Parallel).

Next is just copying the contents of the real drive to the empty virtual disk (after formatting the Virtual HD). Then creating a new VM and moving the virtual hd file to the new VM, Boot it, it will give you errors, you'll have to use a Windows cd or image of the same Windows version to do a Repair Install, hopefully this will make the vm bootable.

If you can follow these instructions, which are not detailed, then you have enough knowledge to do it. If you don't understand these instructions you shouldn't try it.