I'm using Windows on my Mac with Parallels 6 mainly for development (programming with visual studio), so my main concern is not gfx speed, but more hard-drive speed. Compilation can be quite hard-disk intensive, and can be quite slow in Parallels I believe as a result. I also have a theory that its slower when using files that are on my mac home directory and have been 'shared' with the Parallels VM, rather than when they're directly on the VM's drive (i.e. when on the "c:" drive on the parallels VM). So my question is: - can you confirm which is faster (the VM accessing files on the "c:" drive within the VM, or the VM using files that are located on the OS-X partition and shared with the VM) - are there any other tips for optimum hdd performance? (like I remember in the past when I used drive encryption for not the whole hard-drive but just important directories, that it was a big boost to use a dedicated partition for this, rather than a file on top of the guest OS that stored the virutal filesystem, i.e. as I'm using with Parallels, but I take it thats not an option here right?) - does Parallels 7 have any significant improvements in this area (or is it more focused on gfx + startup times which is the impression I got)? Another question actually I have is - compilation is very parallelizable with the compilers I use, however I limited the windows VM to 1 CPU (out of the computer's 8 logical CPUs [4 cores]) since I heard that this is one way to prevent the windows VM using excessive amounts of CPU when in the background, which it had been doing. Do you have any advice there (and has this changed in Parallels 7?)
