What is 'Local Disk (F:) in Windows VM?

[bill111]

Hi,
I installed parallels 10 on my mac pro (three internal physical hard drives, first one partitioned into OS X (mac OS extended journaled) & bootcamp (windows NTFS), second for data (mac OS extended journaled), third for Time machine (mac OS extended journaled)). I have been using paragon HFS+ & NTFS and using bootcamp.

I installed parallels to run windows from bootcamp and it seems OK except in windows explorer/computer under Hard Disk Drives there is a Local Disk (F: )but when I try to access it I get an error message that it needs to be formatted.

What is drive F:? Is it an internal virtual drive in the Parallels VM?

Can I safely delete Local Disk (F: )? If so, how do I do it?

If I cannot delete it, can I safely format it without affecting any of my real drives?

Thanks in advance,
Bill

 

[Eugene@Parallels]

Hi,
Could you please post a screenshot of My Computer?
Also, please check the "Devices" menu right to "Actions" menu in the Mac top menubar - is anything checked there?
Seems like its external HD?

 

[bill111]

Hi,
In Windows
drive C: corresponds to the Bootcamp partition on the first physical drive,
drive Z: corresponds to the Macintosh HD partition on the first physical drive
drive Y: corresponds to the second physical drive in my Mac Pro.

In the Mac top menu bar in the parallels menu / Devices the following devices are ticked -
CD/DVD1 / CD/DVD default
Network1 / shared & shared network
floppy disk / disconnect
sharing / connect all, all windows disks, share Mac OS X folders with windows, all Mac disks, home folder, data 1

Sorry, I had to recover OS X and lost the screen shot I took.

 

[bill111]

Hi,
With the help of parallels support, I have discovered that the F: drive appears in Windows in the parallels VM on my computer because it is the Macintosh HD drive in Windows in the original Bootcamp on my Mac.
I tried removing the F: drive but whether a coincidence or not, I then had to re-install Mac OS X and then update it from time machine.
So, from my experience, if anyone else sees this, it is best to just leave it alone!
By the way, Parallels support is tremendous, the guy stuck with my problem, tried out possible solutions on his test machine and got back to me. You don't get support like that very often these days.
Bill