
Parallels Desktop Virtual Machine 19
Supported Types of Hard Disks
The current version of Parallels Desktop allows virtual machines to use virtual hard disks and
Boot Camp partition with Windows XP /SP2 or Windows Vista installations only.
Note. A Live CD can be used with a virtual machine that has no virtual hard disk.
Virtual Hard Disks
The capacity of virtual hard disk can be set from 20 MB up to 128 GB.
Virtual hard disks can be in one of these formats: plain or expanding.
plain
The file that stores an image of a plain virtual hard disk and resides on your Mac OS X
has constant size from the moment it is created. This reserves space on virtual disk even
when there is no free space on the real hard disk. It also allows the guest OS to operate a
little bit faster. Plain disks can be created with the help of OS Installation Assistant, in
the Custom mode.
expanding
The file that stores an image of an expanding virtual disk and resides on your Mac OS
X is small initially and grows as you add applications and data to the virtual hard disk in
guest OS. In terms of the guest OS, the virtual hard disk capacity is fixed and equals to
what you specified during virtual machine creation. In terms of the primary OS, the size
of the virtual disk image file grows as you add new applications and data to the virtual
hard disk. Using disks in this format saves space on the hard disk of your Macintosh
computer.
Disks of both formats may require certain maintenance. For more information, see Maintaining
Virtual Hard Disks (page 243).
Split disks
A virtual disk of either format can be a single-piece disk or a so-called split disk. By default, a
split disk is cut into 2 GB pieces. Split disk is stored as a single .hdd bundle. The .hdd bundle
for a split disk includes a number of files and one XML file that contains all the information
about other files. Split disks allow faster access to the data.
Note. To change the format of the virtual disk, use Parallels Image Tool - a special utility
installed together with Parallels Desktop. By default, it is installed into the
Applications\Parallels folder on your Mac.
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