Mounting a drive from OS X in Parallels?

G

geoff.clark@mac.com

Bit poster
Hi - I have been able to successfully mount my home directory / user account in OS X using Windows Sharing in OS X, but was curious if anyone knew of a workaround to be able to share a specific drive (the options which are typically available when using Personal File Sharing between Macs). I have a partition with a bunch of Windows data I would like to access, but don't want to copy it all (it's large) into the VM, both for efficiency and to not have duplicate files.

thanks!
 
Create a new Hard Disk file (e.g. games.hdd) and then enable it as Hard Disk 2 in all your VM profiles. Make it connect at startup (but you can uncheck it anytime you want). In Windows VM, right-click My Computer and then choose Manage to launch the Computer Management program. Inside the program, use Disk Management to format the Hard Disk 2 and use Change Drive Letter and Paths to assign it an empty NTFS folder (you need to create it first). Finally, the empty folder icon will become a hard disk icon and you can start moving/installing files to it. Multiple VM can use this method to access the same hard disk.
 
thanks for the quick response. unfortunately I'm trying just to access an existing drive on the OS X system that has a bunch of data on it, and I also access it from the OSX regularly, so I think it would somehow have to be networked to. All I can point to right now is my OSX home account, and not to a particular drive or folder. tried creating aliases or links, but no luck.

maybe there's a window's workaround to access and mount a drive from OSX, I don't know.
 
I do it the other way. I share a windows drive. Then I go to Finder and to Go > Connect to Server. I put int he IP of my XP VM and then use the share to push files to XP. Not perfect, but easy and it works.
 
Drive Access

I used SharePoints for OSX, a donationware utility. You can configure a share for your OS X drive/folder and access it via the network neighborhood in Windows. No need to guess ip numbers. I do this for a USB key disk drive and it works great.
mike
 
Can't see OS X folder using SharePoints

mmak said:
I used SharePoints for OSX, a donationware utility. You can configure a share for your OS X drive/folder and access it via the network neighborhood in Windows. No need to guess ip numbers. I do this for a USB key disk drive and it works great.
mike
Click to expand...

Mike,

I downloaded SharePoints and can only assume I didn't configure the share correctly because I can't find my OS X drive/folder in Network Neighborhood. If it isn't too much trouble, can you give me specific instructions for adding a share? (the 3 or 4 lines in the documentation didn't help).

Thanks,

Steve
 
Here is what I did.
In OSX systems preferences , Click on Saring Icon, enable windows file sharing, make sure you enable your OS X account.
Also take note at the top of the panel your computer's name and the statement below it "Other computers on your local subnet can access your computer at 'Your_Computer_Name.local' "
Launch SharePoints
Make sure Normal Share is selected (it is in the tabs at top of windows)
Enter a Share name, for eample, "My_New_Share"
Click on browse and select the folder you want to share
The path name should appear
Below the Browse button make sure "Windows SMB Sharing" is set to Shared
Click "Create New Share". You should be prompted for the OS X password.
Close Share Points

Move to windows, I am using windows 2000, and now I realize using "network neighborhood" in my previous post was not accurate. I was away from my MBP and trying to write from memory. Sorry. But here it is for Win 2K.


Doule click on "My network Places on Desktop"
Double Click "Computers near me"
You see a computer icon with the name of the OSX computer name [remember; it was in the OS X sharing preference pane]
Double click on it. Enter your OSX username and password. You see the share name you created in SharePoints.
Double click, you'll see your files.
PS: you can create a "shortcut "to your share on the windows desktop and access it frequently.
PS: if you have a USb printer attached to you mac, you can also share it and access it from windows.
 
Mike,

Thanks for the quick response. Everything was okay up to the point where I try to find my Mac on Windows. I'm using XP Home (which should allow me to see other computers), but I don't see an equivalent to "Computers near me". If I go in through the traditional double-panel in WIndows Explorer, I can see the default "Mshome" Workgroup and see the Virtual XP PC, but no other computers. Any idea how to "find" the Mac?

Steve


mmak said:
Here is what I did.
...

Move to windows, I am using windows 2000, and now I realize using "network neighborhood" in my previous post was not accurate. I was away from my MBP and trying to write from memory. Sorry. But here it is for Win 2K.


Doule click on "My network Places on Desktop"
Double Click "Computers near me"
You see a computer icon with the name of the OSX computer name [remember; it was in the OS X sharing preference pane]
Double click on it. Enter your OSX username and password. You see the share name you created in SharePoints.
Double click, you'll see your files.
PS: you can create a "shortcut "to your share on the windows desktop and access it frequently.
PS: if you have a USb printer attached to you mac, you can also share it and access it from windows.
Click to expand...
 
I do not have XP home. But try this. In SahrePoints, click on the SMP properties tab. Change workgroup to "MsHome". Click on the icon to allow change. Also on the windows side, doble click the cnection icon in system tray, click properties, make sure "Cient for microsoft networks" is checked.
Beyond that, maybe someone with XP home can help. Also, I can't guarantee the above would not cause significant disruptions because I am now treading in an area I know little about.
 
mmak said:
I do not have XP home. But try this. In SahrePoints, click on the SMP properties tab. Change workgroup to "MsHome". Click on the icon to allow change. Also on the windows side, doble click the cnection icon in system tray, click properties, make sure "Cient for microsoft networks" is checked.
Beyond that, maybe someone with XP home can help. Also, I can't guarantee the above would not cause significant disruptions because I am now treading in an area I know little about.
Click to expand...

Mike,

I had already tried those but thanks for the suggestions. As you said, maybe someone else will have an answer. I'll also try to e-mail the SharePoints developer and see if he has any ideas. It's funny, this is just the sort of thing that drove me crazy in the Windows world (the MBP is my first foray into Macs - a very pleasing one so far).

Steve
 
Can a firewire and/or USB connected external drive be mounted via SharePoints and made accessible to XP in the Parallels VM?
 
gardel said:
Can a firewire and/or USB connected external drive be mounted via SharePoints and made accessible to XP in the Parallels VM?
Click to expand...
Yes, I first used it to access a USB key drive.
 
I don't understand why this is necessary - there's built in native support for sharing files in OS X (via samba)

D

mmak said:
I used SharePoints for OSX, a donationware utility. You can configure a share for your OS X drive/folder and access it via the network neighborhood in Windows. No need to guess ip numbers. I do this for a USB key disk drive and it works great.
mike
Click to expand...
 
dhjdhj said:
I don't understand why this is necessary - there's built in native support for sharing files in OS X (via samba)

D
Click to expand...
Without SharePoints, I am able to see my OS X home folder from windows, but not the USB drive or other volumes. Do you know any other way:confused: ? I'd go for it, the fewer utilities I use, the better.
 
Symbolic link

A somewhat lazy solution to this problem (as opposed to configuring samba) is to create a symbolic link to the drive (or folder) that you want to access and leave it inside your home directory on OS X. Aliases don't work as Windows will see them as a file and not know what to do with them.

I'm not a big time unix person so I can't remember the precise commands to use when creating an slink. I believe the utility Cocktail will allow you to do it via the GUI, however.

Hope this helps.
 
I haven't tried sharing other volumes but I don't see why it would be a problem - SAMBA can be configured to do do pretty much any kind of sharing.

mmak said:
Without SharePoints, I am able to see my OS X home folder from windows, but not the USB drive or other volumes. Do you know any other way:confused: ? I'd go for it, the fewer utilities I use, the better.
Click to expand...
 
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