Non-network connection between Mac/Parallels

A

Andrew Tallon

Bit poster
Hello,

I've got some Windows software (Leica Cyclone) that will not read files over a network connection. I thus have to keep these files in my Windows partition, which is 100 gigs, and which I have to back up completely every time something changes. I would far prefer to keep the Cyclone files in a folder on my Mac so they could be backed up incrementally. The question: is there way of sharing a folder between parallels and my mac that acts like an actual drive, as opposed to a share point?

Thanks!
Andrew
 
I think Parallels Shared Folders (\\.psf\) behaves like a network drive so the only thing that would work is if you used a FAT or NTFS partition on your Mac as a virtual machine hard disk. Use the Boot Camp option when you add a Hard Disk to the virtual machine configuration.
 
so, if I understand correctly, I'd add a new FAT volume to the partition map (would I have to reformat to do this) then make it bootcamp -ready in parallels. Would this volume be Mac finder-readable? What I was really hoping was to find a low-level way of tricking Parallels into thinking a volume was in fact directly connected rather than networked. Something you could do in unix but perhaps not in windows.
Thanks
 
Andrew,

I guess you software is only having problems with UNC paths not network drives per se. So you may try to mount any network share (or Parallels Shared Folder) as a drive letter in Windows: Tools -> Map Network Drive... from Windows Explorer or 'net use x: \\host\share' from command prompt.
 
Alas, Cyclone still knows that it's a network share. In fact the icon in windows explorer, though mapped to a drive letter, still shows a network icon. So it's going to have to be a tricker solution than this.
 
Another possibility is to keep Cyclone files in a VM and use Parallels Mounter to access these files from OS X. Note that Windows VM must be shut down. More info on Mounter here.
When VM is running you can use reverse sharing (see Sharing Windows Disks to Mac OS).
 
So if I understand correctly, I'd make a new virtual machine with the Cyclone documents, and share these back to the Mac so they could be backed up (by Time Machine)—although I'm not convinced that Time Machine will back up the contents of a mounted disk. How would the Windows VM be able to read these files? If you say that the Windows VM has to be shut down, then it doesn't sound like this would be possible.
 
You wouldn't make a new virtual machine. You would just add another virtual hard disk (.hdd) Hard Disk 2 to your existing virtual machine. Keep the Cyclone files on the 2nd virtual hard disk which will be viewable in the Finder when you're running the VM. If you're not running the VM then you can mount it with Parallels Mounter. If Time Machine doesn't back up the mounted .hdd contents, it will at least backup the .hdd file itself (which I think you didn't want in the first place but at least this time it will only be the Cyclone files and not Windows and Programs).

To create a Boot Camp partition, use Boot Camp Assistant in the Utilities folder. It will shrink your Mac OS X partition to make room for a new partition. Format the new partition as FAT.

If Boot Camp Assistant won't create the partition then you can do it with Disk Utility on the Mac OS X installer disk by first shrinking your Mac OS X partition then creating a new FAT partition; but using Disk Utility requires you to manually sync the GPT and MBR partition tables using fdisk or you could download gpt fdisk which has a sync option called "make hybrid". Instead of Disk Utility/fdisk/gdisk you could use a utility like iPartition that will sync the partition tables for you (you just select which partitions you want to make visible to Windows - the selected partitions will be placed in the MBR making the disk a MBR / GPT hybrid).

After you have a Boot Camp partition, you can add a new virtual hard disk to your existing VM and use the Boot Camp option to select the Boot Camp partition to be used for the virtual hard disk. When the virtual machine is using the hard disk, it will not be visible to Mac OS X except as a mounted virtual machine disk. When the virtual machine is not running, the partition will be visible to Mac OS X as a FAT volume. I don't know if Time Machine will backup FAT volumes.
 
Very interesting solution—the only drag is that Time Machine won't recognize FAT volumes. Is there a way that I could get windows to see an OSX extended volume and treat it as a connected hard disk? Probably a long shot...
 
Parallels will not let you use an HFS+ partition as a Boot Camp disk even though there's no technical reason why this should not be allowed since there are drivers that allow you to use HFS+ partitions in Windows. Maybe it would work if the HFS+ partition was on a USB disk and you tell Parallels to take over the USB device.

Why doesn't Leica Cyclone let you read files from a network drive? Is this documented somewhere? Are you sure there's no workaround or setting that will change this?

You've tried a \\.psf\ path and you've tried mapping a \\.psf\ path to a drive letter. Have you tried enabling file sharing on the Mac and connecting from the VM? What if you mounted a \\.psf\ path as a folder mount point instead of a drive letter?
 
Cyclone CAN read from a server--if you fork out a few extra thousand dollars. I'm really not sure why they need to charge for this, but there you are. I've tried all sorts of sharepoint combinations--whether drive or psf, Cyclone knows that it's not a real disk. So until I can trick windows/parallels into thinking a sharepoint is drive, I'll have to stick to backing up the whole partition. Here's a question: can windows access mac disk images as if they were actual drives? This would be relatively easily to create.
 
Parallels won't let you use a partition that belongs to a disk image as a Boot Camp disk even though there's no reason why it shouldn't work.

Maybe there's a Windows utility that will let you mount disk images in Windows as writable. Lots of them will mount disk images as read only. You'll need the utility to work with disk images that the Mac can mount.

How would this be different than using an .hdd? Will Time Machine do backups of stuff on a disk image?
 
I imagined that you could create a disk image with OsX extended format, which would qualify it for Time Machine backup. But this is getting pretty speculative at this point. I think either I'll just stick with the current system or go to a volume such as you suggested, backed up with ChronoSync instead of Time Machine.
 
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