usb problems

[piercehan]

parallels XP is not recognizing my external harddrive when plugged in. i am new to this and dont know much about parallels. i am assuming that i need to download some specific drivers but i dont know which ones or where to get them. help please!!! i tried using the bootcamp drivers from apple but the cd wont work and it says the cd is not made for this system.

 

[bbraun]

If you are attempting to get a USB device recognized within a Parallels guest OS, you should have a look at the FAQ post: http://forum.parallels.com/thread307.html. It says:

Q: Can USB devices be bridged to the VM?
N: Not in this beta, but likely to be available in GA.

Bridging firewire devices is also not supported:
Q: Can firewire devices be bridged to the VM?
A: No.

If your external hard drive is recognized by the host Mac OS X system, you can setup network file sharing between your host and guest operating systems. I would suggest looking at Samba documentation, if your guest OS is Windows XP.