Use Time Machine on Windows VM files

L

LeeAtKony

Bit poster
I'm using Parallels 7, Lion, and Windows 7. I found that backing up my entire .pvm file is slow and eats up my backup drive, so that I can only store a single backup in Time Machine.

My Windows drive appears in Finder as file://localhost/Volumes/C/. The ideal scenario would be for Time Machine to treat my Windows drive as just another folder on my Mac and back its contents up incrementally as individual files, rather than as one monolithic .pvm file. I am more concerned with losing documents than with the ability to restore the entire VM as a single unit.

What can I do to have Time Machine back up the files on the C: drive?

Thanks,
Lee Grey
 
From what you describe, your best bet would be to share your Mac home folder with your Windows guest, and then remap My Documents to point to the shared Mac folder -- that way all your documents are saved on the Mac side, and can be managed appropriately from there. Then you would simply omit your virtual machine from any Time Machine backups. This has the added benefit of preventing any document loss if your VM ever goes funny.

To change where My Documents points to in Win 7, open your username folder in Explorer, right-click the Documents icon, select Properties, and then select the Location tab. Then click the Move... button and browse to your Mac's shared Documents folder.

On Win XP, right-click on My Documents, select Properties, and then find the tab with the path and a "Move" or "Change location" button. (I'm sitting in front of a Win 7 machine or I'd tell you in better detail).

Hope this helps,
 
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