Parallels Desktop 14 on 2017 iMac with Fusion Drive

Just sharing with the community...

I have been happily using Parallels Desktop for Mac for several years (starting with PD6) to run Windows 95/98/7/10 virtual machines on my Mac. Most recently I was using PD14 on my MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports) to run a W10 VM and the performance was excellent. My MBP configuration included a 3.1GHz dual-core i5 processor, 8GB DDR3 RAM, and 512GB SSD.

I recently migrated to a 2017 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display (3.5GHz quad-core i5, 16GB DDR4 RAM, 1TB Fusion Drive). PD14 ran incredibly slowly in comparison with my MBP. I figured that this had something to do with the Fusion Drive in my new iMac. I was even thinking about replacing my Fusion Drive iMac with a new SSD iMac to see if this would improve PD performance.

Instead I purchased a 500GB Samsung T5 external SSD (USB 3.1 Gen 2 10Gbps) and moved my Win10 VM to this external drive. The Samsung drive is connected to my iMac via one of the two Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports. Result: amazing PD VM performance restored! Like night-and-day!

I was even thinking about trying one of the new Thunderbolt 3 Samsung X5 external SSD drives, but I am very pleased with the Samsung T5 performance. Performance is as good (or better) than the performance on my MBP SSD.

YMMV

 

Hi. Thanks for sharing your experience with Parallels Desktop. Please post again for additional queries.