Shared folders are dog slow under 3.0?

Discussion in 'Windows Virtual Machine' started by koreth, Jun 25, 2007.

  1. koreth

    koreth Junior Member

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    I have my Quicken 2005 datafiles on a shared folder so I can more easily back them up from the Mac side. Under 2.5 Quicken ran about as fast as it does on my Windows machine. Now that I have upgraded to 3.0, Quicken crawls along like a snail. When it is drawing my checkbook register, I can actually see it rendering each individual transaction, one at a time.

    At first I thought 3.0 was making Quicken itself really slow. But then I tried running an installer for a game (to check out the DirectX support) and told it to install to a shared folder. This game takes under a minute to install on native Windows, but under Parallels the install took over a half-hour!

    So now I'm thinking Quicken is slow simply because it's hitting its datafiles while it renders, and access to those files has slowed to a crawl under 3.0.

    Anyone else seeing a similar slowdown with shared folders?

    Other than that, 3.0 is working fine for me. No BSODs, and hotsyncing my Treo over USB is noticeably faster than before. (Ironically, my hotsync data directory is also on a shared folder, but the slowdown in shared folders is apparently not as great as the speedup in USB support in 3.0.)
     
    Last edited: Jun 25, 2007
  2. bmcdaniel

    bmcdaniel Bit poster

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    It's not just you

    I've observed the same thing. Shared folders were never particularly zippy; but under 3.0, performance is simply abysmal.
     
  3. David5000

    David5000 Pro

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    312
    Someone more knowledgeable will undoubtedly chime in, but in the meantime, have you tried moving your Quicken data files out of the shared folder? As far as I know this would not prevent you from still backing up to your shared folder, which could in turn be backed up by the Mac. Otherwise, if you make a backup clone of your entire drive, your Quicken files (application, data and backups) are backed up along with your entire VM.

    David
     
    Last edited: Jun 27, 2007
  4. sinnfrei

    sinnfrei Bit poster

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    Windows sharing from MacOS

    Same thing here for me.
    So I just tried some things. One thing that did work and speeded up the transfer enormously was to mount the windows share from Mac OS X
    System Pref. / Shares / Services -> Windows sharing
    You can then search for your Computer name in windows and access the share (which is your home directory) and mount it as a network drive.
    This speeded things up for me at a factor of 10 (at least it feels like that) :cool:
    Maybe turning of Windows sharing in OS X (and having parallels shares only) could also help - but I didn't try.
    Cheers,
    M.
     
  5. Waterdweller

    Waterdweller Bit poster

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    Slow Performance

    Glad to know I'm not the only one. Use of my Windows Quicken program even with startup is HORRIBLY slow since upgrading to 3.0...

    This is my primary usage of Parallels...regretting the upgrade...especially since I have now paid for Parallels twice in 9months!!:mad:

    Sure appreciate any fixes to this...if you find them
     
  6. steve775c

    steve775c Bit poster

    Messages:
    2
    Performance issue PD 3.0

    I have the same problem here. After the update to Parallels 3.0 everything seems to be slow. I run it on a MacBook CoreDuo with 2.0Ghz and 2 GB RAM. 1 GB for Windows and 1 GB for OS X. With version 2.5 it ran very smooth. The performance improved a bit after disabling the Option to mount the windows harddisks under OS X in the VM Configuration.
    If there are some more things I can do to improve the performance of PD 3.0, please let me know...
     
  7. UK_mac_user

    UK_mac_user Bit poster

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    Very frustrating

    any dialog/Explorer activity that accesses the shared drive is hugely slow now under 3

    I see 'pauses' of 5 to 10 seconds whilst using explorer on the shared drive, with 'Not responding' showing until it catches up. Any workaround would be extremely welcome.

    This after a total rebuild: XP crashed with some file corruption... since this was inside FileVault I decided to remove Filevault in case it was the encryption overhead that was introducing the delay but this proved not to be the case and the new install outside of Filevault is just as slow.

    Incidentally, the corrupted XP file could not be deleted by the Mac OS, even under root access via the CLI... OS X simply could not delete the file, meaning I could not strip out the Vilefault, meaning I have to wipe the hardrive and reformat or live with it. (Mac support drones could not work outside the script and could only suggest the reformat). Sigh.
     
  8. alexbet

    alexbet Junior Member

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    Unbelievable!

    I use Windows because of IIS. I code in ASP.NET. I have the files on the Windows disk and I access those files with Dreamweaver through the shared Windows disk. Since 3.0, this is a PAIN to do because everything is SOOO slow. Even copying the files to the shared Windows disk is VERY SLOW.

    I've paid twice for Parallels and I like all the bells and whistles it has, but it's performance with the shared folders is TERRIBLE. I now tried VMWare Fusion and that thing is flying in comparison to Parallels.

    Well Parallels, you better fix this VERY soon, or I am gone to VMWare. I don't play games on Parallels, I use it for work. And since 3.0, Parallels is just no good for work, sorry.
     
  9. alexg

    alexg Parallels Developers

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    Hi,

    Thank you for your suggestions. We will improve the speed of Windows to Mac sharing.

    Note: VMWare does not have such functionality.

    Alexander
     
  10. alexbet

    alexbet Junior Member

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    Yes, that's why I stayed with Parallels for so long and I paid twice for it. But this time it has come to a point where I can't work. Like I said, I don't play games, so I don't need the 3D stuff and all that. I just need a fast VM and fast shared folders. Shouldn't they be as fast as you browsing through Mac folders? At least that's my idea behind a shared folder.

    Another thing that I noticed is the following. If I were to choose a shared folder as the home directory in IIS (so I avoid reading the files in Dreamweaver through the shared folders), when I use ASP files it works fine. But, when I use ASP.NET, and when I update a file, the update doesn't show until I restart IIS or restart Parallels. The strange thing is that this is true even for a text change. No, it is not a caching problem because I turn off caching for both ASP and ASP.NET in IIS, and I turn off the caching in the browser. Plus, it is very strange for a text change not to show, even with all the caching turned on. It seems that when I change the file, the Windows system is not "notified" that the file has changed. I've read somewhere that Windows has this "notification system" where when a file changes the system is notified. So in the case of IIS, when a file changes IIS is notified and reads that file again and serves it with the new content. If IIS is not notified, it just server the same old file (for some reason). I hope that I am making sense.

    Otherwise Alexander, yes I agree, Parallels is MUCH better than VMWare and has a LOT more features, and the features are better integrated. But, this shared folder thing is just driving me crazy because it dramatically affects the speed at which I work. I also see that it affects a lot of other people, so this is not just my problem obviously. Hope you fix this in the next updates.

    Alex
     
  11. cemerick

    cemerick Bit poster

    Messages:
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    I'd like to second (third, fourth?) this sentiment -- shared folders in 3.0 are painfully unusable (and here, I'm referring to shares mounted in windows sourced from OS X). I'm sticking with v2.5 until this is resolved....(or moving to vmware eventually I suppose if no solution seems forthcoming).
     
  12. Martin Schouten

    Martin Schouten Bit poster

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    1
    I've mapped the shared folder to a drive letter (If they aren't are so already automatically). Now the navigation through the folders is fast.
     

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