Will connecting an external hard drive to Parallels for Mac erase the (Windows) drive?

[hartford]

How can I connect my Windows PC's actual hard drive (in enclosure) to Parallels Desktop 11 on Mac without destroying the data? I DO NOT want to format the drive. Question 2: I've got the hard drive connected to my Mac right now, will that cause issues when connecting to virtual Windows?

 

[Sylvester@Parallels]

How can I connect my Windows PC's actual hard drive (in enclosure) to Parallels Desktop 11 on Mac without destroying the data? I DO NOT want to format the drive. Question 2: I've got the hard drive connected to my Mac right now, will that cause issues when connecting to virtual Windows?

Hello hartford,
1. Your Windows hard drive would be in NTFS format, which will not give read and write permission when you connect it to your Mac computer, so in order to share data with Parallels Desktop, you will have to format the drive into EXFAT format but no before taking a complete backup.
2. Sharing your external hard drive with your virtual machine will not cause any issues.

 

[hartford]

Hey, I forgot about this thread. Hello and thanks for answering.