Filed under: Switchers, Tips and tricks, TUAW Tips
Parallels virtual disk dance of pain
Sometimes virtualization can be aggravating. If you've found yourself with a Parallels virtual disk that turned out to be uncomfortably small for all your stuff, there's a way to expand your horizons -- increase the virtual drive size with the included Image Tool, then boot the virtual machine from a free GParted LiveCD image to bump up the Windows partition to the full size of the virtual disk. Easy as pie, right? Well, unfortunately not anymore: Parallels has (temporarily, we hope) removed Image Tool from the 3.0 distribution and the older version of the tool will not work with the current disk image format. The resizing procedure has been confusing for users (and possibly eaten the VHDs of a few unlucky souls), so until Parallels comes up with a more integrated resizing solution, it's off the table. You can get around the missing utility by making a new (larger) blank disk image, then using a tool like Acronis MigrateEasy within Parallels to move from old HD to new; still, it's a pain in the keister.
Meanwhile, as I discovered when preparing to move my Boot Camp XP setup into a virtual machine, the otherwise excellent Parallels Transporter P2V (physical to virtual) conversion tool has a serious functional gap. Transporter, which is designed to help you create Parallels virtual machines from physical PCs or other virtual disk formats, works on just about any source machine except... you guessed it: a Boot Camp installation of Windows. Argh! I could capture the Boot Camp install as a restorable disk image with NetRestore or WinClone, but I really wanted to go virtual, as I am in the process of moving over to a new MacBook Pro (yay!) with a smaller internal drive (boo!). What to do, what to do?
In this case, it was the competition that came to the rescue, in the form of VMware's free Converter tool. VMware Converter, which does the same basic P2V tricks as Parallels Transporter, works just fine with a Boot Camp setup, thank you very much, and neatly whisked my one-third-full 40 GB XP partition into a folderful of virtual disk chunks; with Converter you can also easily expand or contract your target disk size, which is another approach to the resizing problem above.
From there I had what we refer to in Brooklyn as "lotsa optsh" -- continue on using the new virtual machine in VMware Fusion, or run back to Parallels Transporter to continue converting into a Parallels VM. In fact, to avoid installing a full VMware setup (I did fire up the new v4.1, just to kick the tires a little), there's a conversion method in Transporter that goes directly from the VMware virtual disk to a Parallels .hdd file, don't pass Go or collect $200. Transporter will even make the needed config changes to the resulting disk, open it up in a fresh virtual machine, and load the Parallels support tools and drivers for you, hands-free.
Well, Parallels, I suppose I can forgive the Boot Camp transfer situation, but let's not go down this twisty disk-y road again, mmmkay?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Gandhi said 5:25PM on 6-24-2007
I have used both Parallels and VMWare beta. I find VMWare the better of the two solutions. It is faster, much easier to use, interface is easier to navigate, and generally seems to have better polish in beta form than Parallels. And I think Unity is a better solution than Coherance. Not to mention wider variety of OSes supported by Fusion.
And especially at the $39.99 intro price, it is a steal. While my wife's Macbook has Parallels using the Bootcamp partition, my new MBP, once it arrives (soon I hope), will be using Fusion for Windows needs.
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Jon said 5:52PM on 6-24-2007
$39.99? I thought it was $79.99?
And Parallels made a fatal mistake in not giving users of version 2 a free upgrade or reduced upgrade price (at least I couldn't find one, correct me if I'm wrong) as it means we can easily move to the competition without losing a thing if they're offering something better.
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Santa said 5:54PM on 6-24-2007
All of a sudden, i am disappointed. A few months ago, i purchased parallels at my local Apple store. It worked great. until the upgrade. Now, nothing works any more. They want me to not only pay AGAIN, but now I'm supposed to re-enter the Parallel serial number and that endless MS Windows number. How idiotic is that. It's just an upgrade, for crying out loud. Parallels should have given a RED warning before all this happened. My original one worked just fine. What's the stupid upgrade doing for me, other than now getting me upset? I really thought Parallels was great. No more.
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Nitai Aventaggiato said 5:59PM on 6-24-2007
Hi there
I have converted a Bootcamp partition to a Parallels Virtual Drive without problems. I listed the step on my blog at http://blog.econtentpark.com/permalinks/2007/03/15/Converting-a-BootCamp-Windows-installation-into-a-Parallels-Virtual-Disk-Image and this was in March of this year.
Nitai
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Hobbes said 6:02PM on 6-24-2007
I bought Parallels 2 (full price) and then upgraded to version 3. I heard about the new version here first. Never got an email from Parallels letting me know as a current customer of the new version. Last week, probably a month or so after the new update is available I get a sales email from them. Bad customer service.
I pre-ordered VMWare and have been using the beta 4 ever since. It runs smoother and seems ways more polished than Parallels ever was.
I will still be watching both products, but mainly using VMWare from now on.
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Michael Rose said 6:27PM on 6-24-2007
#4 -- Hi Nitai, thanks for the input. Earlier versions of Transporter would sometimes work with Boot Camp but the current version is unsupported and generally does not work. :-(
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Iso Grifo said 6:41PM on 6-24-2007
Any idea how to shrink a virtual drive? I had to make a 10GB drive to get Vista to install correctly. Now It's bigger than I need it. I only use it for testing, so I don't need much space on my virtual drive.
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Joshua Ochs said 7:37PM on 6-24-2007
Bought Parellels 2.x. It served my needs (mostly), but was anything but Mac-like. Ever since VMWare beta3 (and the disabling of the debugging code) I haven't looked back. It's virtualization codebase is more mature, its interface is more Maclike, and its "Unity" feature works better than Coherence for me. ACPI support makes inporting from Boot Camp and real machines trivial (I move my work Thinkpad into a VM all the time to reduce travel weight).
Get VMWare while it's cheap - you won't be disappointed!
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wayne said 8:10PM on 6-24-2007
I'm in the same situation, I need to shrink my Parallels also, any advice?
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Mike said 8:28PM on 6-24-2007
Shrinking: You could try using Parallels Compressor, built into the app; however, if your disk image is fixed-size, Compressor won't shrink it. You can go through the cloning methods mentioned above -- MigrateEasy will copy your installation to a smaller disk, as will VMware Converter.
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MilwGonzo said 10:05PM on 6-24-2007
From the VMWare web site :
For a limited time, VMware Fusion is available for pre-order for only $39.99, a 50% savings over the suggested retail price of $79.99 when VMware Fusion is released for general availability.
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timgollin said 5:11AM on 6-25-2007
Try CrossOver (codeweavers.com), excellent low cost implementation of open-source WINE which gives better functionality than Parallels without as many workarounds, without the expense of a Windows license, and with better performance. If you just want to run standard Windows apps like Office inside an OS-X environment, this is the way to go . . plus free trial to see how well it works for you . . no nonsense about designating a special vritual drive, or any of these other issues; it just interacts with your existing drive systems. I also started with Parallels but have not used it in months since I installed CrossOver. Oh, and the licensed version is cheap too.
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John Vilsack said 10:22AM on 6-25-2007
I am a license holder of Parallels, but I would like to convert my existing Parallels VM to a VMWare one. Does anyone have any ideas or an easy to use how-to?
I tried searching the interwebs, to no avail.
Thanks!
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Don Carcharo said 10:56AM on 6-25-2007
I've been using PArallels ever since the first beta and my impressions are that it's gotten progressively worse with each update. So when version 3 rolled around and the demo not only didn't work but nearly hosed my entire Mac I switched teams and tried Fusion.
Man am I happy I did. Fusion may not have as many features but it works. It doesn't slow my Mac down, it doesn't cause any crashes, it doesn't refuse to turn on, it has a huge library of virtual appliances - and it's still only a beta.
Excellent product and I'll be sure to take advantage of the trial discount.
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Jeff Dzierzawski said 11:44AM on 6-25-2007
What I did with my Parallels-PC XP was just map my .iMac drive as a shared drive. I now store eveything there, including my Windows stuff. Now I don't care that my Parallels drive is small because I don't use it! Only Applications and windows files there. I imagine that the applications can even be moved over to the mac drive.
Works great and all my stuff is in the same place.
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Brian Rice said 3:04PM on 6-25-2007
@John Vilsack: Here are the instructions I wrote for how to migrate a Parallels VM to a VMware VM.
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=88195
I suggest reading the whole thread, including Pat Lee's comment (the tenth one down), which suggests an excellent improvement to my instructions.
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Mike said 4:07PM on 6-25-2007
I was able to resize a Parallels virtual drive using Acronis True Image. I posted about it at http://www.mcdevzone.com/2007/06/18/tip-resizing-a-disk-image-in-parallels-desktop-30
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Michael Rose said 4:24PM on 6-25-2007
Brian, Mike, thanks for the walkthroughs.
Mike, I was under the impression that MigrateEasy was the Acronis product that was best suited for this approach, but if TrueImage worked for you that's great. FYI some of the Acronis code is already in Parallels to support the snapshot feature -- Acronis is another SWsoft sister company.
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