Man, I really like Parallels, don't get me wrong. But there are some glaring rough edges that I'd sure like to see addressed. First of all, expanding a disk doesn't work -- it just doesn't. There are some instructions for how to get the disk to expand volume-wise in Windows, but no matter what I do I get a "disk corrupted" error when I try to boot from the disk. Near as I can see, none of the "expanding disk" options work at all. They just don't -- Windows will not use an expanding disk and at no point will it grow in size or be useful. I need to use fixed volumes. Similarly, when I add a 2nd hard drive to my VM I'd like for, you know, Windows, to see it and let me use it, but nothing happens. Actually, it dawns on me now that I may need to format the new virtual HD to get it to come up, which I'll try, but it'd be nice if there were some indication of this if so. In short, the program is great. I'd love to see some edges files and, if a feature is not working, some notification of this (e.g. this feature is currently disabled), to keep me from staying up til 3 am trying to get it to work like I did l ast night.
Yes... Yes, I can find no way to add a "new" drive as a second HDD -- the drive shows as a device that's installed Windows but will never mount. The only way to add a second drive that I can see is to duplicate the installed main disk and use it as the second drive. One more observation. I am using Parallels with XP after limping along with Win2000 for some time. I had "less" compatibility with Win2000 (a game I am testing for release wouldn't run in 2000 but did in XP in Parallels), and also, I could never get Parallels Shared Folders to work worth a darn. All in all, XP is the better environment for Parallels.
