Can I Move Parallels Desktop For Mac To An External Drive
Last month, VMWare released Fusion, a virtualization program that lets you run Windows and other x86-based operating systems on an Intel-based Mac. While working on Macworld ’s upcoming review of the software, I wanted to test the ability to convert a Parallels virtual machine (VM for short) into a Fusion VM. This feature is described on VMWare’s Web site, and I was able to make it work.
And why might you want to do such, you may ask? If you use Parallels Desktop for Mac and you’ve already installed and customized your Windows environment, the conversion process I’ve outlined here will let you move your customized Windows set-up over to Fusion. If you don’t use the converter, you’ll have to start from scratch with a fresh Windows installation.
In my tests, I found the process of converting one virtual machine into another to be somewhat involved. If you’re thinking about doing the same thing on your computer, here’s a how-to that will walk you through each of the steps.
But before we get started, consider these caveats:
Install Parallels Desktop, then double-click on the.pvm file on your Mac to start the virtual machine. Note: OS X does not support writing to NTFS partitions by default. We recommend to format your external drive to either OS X native HFS+ file system or ExFAT file. Manage the limited storage on your Mac, since you can move an infrequently used VM to an external drive and still use it without a noticeable performance penalty. Setup for this video: Parallels.
With those warnings in mind, if you still want to proceed, read on.
Prerequisites
Before you can start the conversion process, there are some things you’ll need to have:
Running a Parallels Desktop virtual machine from an external drive (yes, for real!) With the rising trend of cloud storage, computer users are seeing a gradual increase in file size foreverything!
Note that VMWare also has an extensive collection of online training videos for Fusion, including one on converting physical PCs and other companies’ VMs to Fusion’s format. You’ll need to register for a free account, but there are no other costs involved. So if you’d rather watch the video training, click that link—really, I won’t mind. I haven’t watched the video myself, so I can’t comment on how useful it may be.
Keep in mind that most of the steps you’ll be reading here are covered in the above-linked VMWare conversion PDF. This article is designed to expand or clarify those steps as necessary, so I won’t repeat everything it says. Think of this how-to as a helper document for the VMWare PDF, and not a standalone solution guide.
Desktop Virtualization| News Parallels Desktop 6 for Mac Enterprise Edition Adds Policy Enforcement • By • 07/12/11 has released. Parallels Desktop enables Mac users to create a Windows virtual machine on an, so they can run both Windows and Mac applications at the same time, without rebooting. Enterprise Edition includes features to help IT administrators set up and manage Parallels client software and virtual machines in organizations with large numbers of Mac users who also need to use Windows applications to complete their work. Parallels desktop 9 for mac education edition.
Step One: Install VMWare Converter
Assuming you’ve got all the prerequisites covered, here’s how to go about converting a Parallels Windows XP Pro VM into a Fusion VM. I first ran my backup app and created fresh backups of my Parallels’ VMs, just in case something went horribly wrong. I highly recommend backing up the VM you’ll be converting, at the least, even though it shouldn’t be affected by this process—although the program is called VMWare Converter, it’s really cloning one VM to another, leaving the original intact.
After you’ve made your backups, launch Parallels and download and install (if you haven’t already) VMWare Converter, then launch the program. Now, before you go any further, make sure you have enough drive space in Parallels for the conversion. The VMWare Converter will apparently need as much free drive space as your VM currently takes up (not its capacity, but its utilized space). This wasn’t clear to me on my first attempts at using the converter, and I received this error message in the VMWare Converter:
ERROR: Failed to take snapshot of a source volume. Possible causes include not having any NTFS volumes on Windows XP or Windows 2003 source systems, and not having enough free disk space.
I was confused because my Mac drive had 200GB free for a 10GB VM conversion. My Parallels VM, however, had only 2GB free, and that was the cause of the problem. If your Parallels VM lacks free drive space, you do not need to use the time-consuming Parallels Image Tool to expand it, however—there’s a simpler and faster solution: just add another virtual hard drive in Parallels. If you have sufficient drive space in your VM, you can skip the following section and jump to Step Two.
Aside: Create more drive space in Parallels
To add another virtual hard drive, shut down Windows and then choose Edit -> Virtual Machine. In the new window that opens, click Add, which will open another window. Select Hard Disk in the Available Hardware list, then click Next. On the next screen, leave the selected option (Create a new virtual hard disk image) as is and click Next. On the next screen, choose a size for your new hard drive to provide enough space, and leaving the format set to Expanding, then click Next. Finally, enter a path for the hard drive (you can leave it as is) and click Finish.
You can now reboot your Windows VM in Parallels, but (sadly) there’s still more work to do to use your new hard drive. In Windows XP, you’ll need to format the drive to make it usable. There may be many ways of doing this, but here’s the one I know. Go to Control Panels -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management, and then click on the Disk Management entry in the Storage section of the list. If you’re lucky, this will automatically launch the Initialize and Convert Disk Wizard. Click Next a few times, and you’re done…with the first step. In the lower right pane of the Computer Management window, click on the icon and text next to the white block area representing the drive you’ve just created, as seen here:
It’s not entirely obvious, but that text block labeled “Disk 2” has been clicked. Once it’s been clicked, select Action -> All Tasks -> New Volume from the menus. This will launch the New Volume wizard. In this wizard, you can just click Next until you see the Finish button (though you can save a bit of time if you check the Quick Format box on one of the wizard’s screens). When the wizard completes, you’ll finally have a new, usable, mounted hard drive in your My Computer window. (I really think there must be a faster way to do this, but I’m not enough of a Windows expert to know what that method might be. If you know a simpler way, please share the secret!)
You don’t need to do anything to make the VMWare Converter use this new drive; as long as it shows up as a device in your My Computer window, the converter will use the space.
Step Two: Make sure sharing works
Step Three: Run the VMWare Converter
Step Four: Wait
Step Five: Create a Fusion VM
Step Six: Power up!
Step Seven: Clean shutdown
Adding multiple CPU support to a converted VM
If you feel you need it, there’s more detail on this step of the process in this post on VMWare’s forums.
Final thoughts
Despite the length of this guide, the process of converting your Parallels VM to a Fusion VM really isn’t all that difficult. There are just a lot of steps, and it will take some time. Between this how-to, VMWare’s excellent PDF, and the available video training, there’s lots of help available to get you through the process. The good news is that it worked—at least in my case—and the resulting converted VM seems to be just as stable as one I created with a fresh Windows XP installation.
I’ll have more on Fusion in my full review of that application.
[ Senior editor Rob Griffiths writes the Mac OS X Hints blog and reviewed Parallels Desktop 3. ]
I'm using a MacBook Pro Retina 15' with only 256 GB SSD storage, however, for my new job I need to be able to run Windows on it. I'll need to install Visual Studio and some other tools on the Windows system, so I need quite a bit of storage, maybe around 100 GB should be enough. There are very small USB flash drives with capacity of up to 256 GB, would it be a good idea to run the VM on that? I want to avoid using a big external hard drive, since they are not really convenient, just too big. Also, I don't have enough storage on the local SSD drive.
klanomath2 Answers
Running the VM from a USB drive is definitely possible, but far from optimal.
I use VM for running Project and Visio on my mac (never from USB though), and it made a huge difference when I switched to SSD.
Some numbers: A decent internal SSD will have a speed (sequential read/write) of around 500 MB/s while a fast external SSD will do around 300 MB/s, and a top notch USB 3.0 drive will be around 140 MB/s (a lot USB 3.0 drives are bellow 20 MB/s) - Source: SSD Benchmarks, USB Benchmarks
To put this into perspective, a top notch usb drive should perform nearly as well as an old hard disk drive, so it's definitely viable. But it will only be half as fast as a good external SSD drive and 1/3 as fast as your internal drive.
This makes a huge difference when running VMs. Keep in mind the bottleneck here is the actual read/write operations on the drive, since the USB/Thunderbolt bandwidth allows for much greater speeds.
Whatever you chose, make sure you're getting a fast performance unit, since speed is very important for VMs. I really recommend making sure you get a Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 drive.
Running a VM off of USB isn't advisable unless you have no other options; it will be painfully slow as other have already answered.
On my iMac, I run several VirtualBox VMs (Windows 7, Win10, Server 2012, and FreeBSD). FreeBSD and Win10 run all the time, the others only when I am doing something specific. My Windows 10 machine is the only one on my internal drive, but the others are located on the WD Thunderbolt Drive and they boot and perform perfectly well; I have no complaints.
Incidentally, I use my Windows VM for exactly the same reasons you do - Visio, Project and some features in OneNote that haven't made it to the Mac version.
As for the external drives being too big, I definitely see your point, but the one thing in their favor is that I am able to use 'enterprise grade' drives which are designed for 24/7 use and thusly it has been extremely reliable with absolutely no downtime where as I just had to replace a portable drive (which I never left my desk) after about 18 months. It was a trade off I will willing to make.
I have been evaluating switching to a portable drive like the Transcend model but since my iMac (by design) doesn't go anywhere, it's not a critical issue for me. The question is, are you away from your desk often enough to need a portable TB drive or will a desktop version work?