Simplify the Virtual Hard Disk

In the simple, formulaic use of Parallels, you've got one virtual machine, which has a .pvm "file" (actually a package) that contains that entire VM environment and no reason to get confused or issues with any structural complexity.

But under other circumstances -- multiple virtual machines, the occasional use of one virtual machine environment to address files that are part of a second virtual machine, the conversion of virtual hard disks that were used by a different VM product, a desire to make backup copies of a virtual hard drive without backing up the entire VM, and so on... where one wishes to deal with the virtual hard disk separately from the .pvm file.

a) Each virtual hard drive seems to exist as a .hdd "file" which is located by default inside the .pvm file, but which is, ITSELF, yet another package. If you ever find yourself adding an existing virtual hard drive to a VM, you'll learn this. You can navigate to the .hdd only to be confronted with an "Open" rather than an "OK" button. Within the .hdd package is the actual virtual hard disk file, an .hds file.

b) If you tend to preserve a given operating system as it is AND ALSO wish to follow the upgrade path when it becomes available, you'll probably want to duplicate the entire .pvm file and keep one as it and upgrade the other. But when you rename the virtual machine in Control Center, it renames some but not all of these elements that comprise the virtual hard disk. The deeply buried .hds file doesn't (necessarily) reflect the change.

c) Aside from which there are -- for unknown reasons -- multiple different .hds files floating around inside the .hdd package, and for that matter multiple .hdd packages inside a given .pvm package which makes for additional confusion.

There's got to be a way of simplifying this and making it a lot more user-friendly