External HDD install

Hi,

I have a MacBook with not much hdd space, and I'd like to install Windows VM into an external hdd. I know the performance will be poor, but I don't really need to run anything big, just one or two apps I can't find for OS X.

I'm going to buy a new external HDD and my doubt is if investing a little bit more on one with firewire interface will improve the performance of the guest OS.

For 120 GB models, firewire interface raises about 40-50 € the price of the just-USB version.

Thanks for your attention.

 

get a firewire 800 if you can
I have 300gb La Cie

I run my Mac Book Pro in that way
(never with Bootcamp)

I installed my first external VM by cloning from the original installation om the Macintosh HD
which I deleted after testing the clone

always from the Parallels file menu

Hugh W

each week end after WInXP house keeping With Windows Live OneCare
I clone a clean VM and delete the older one



so I have not tried to install

 

Thanks for your response.

Yesterday I decided to buy a Lacie with Firewire400. The price for Firewire800 2.5" hard drives is too much for what I'm going to use it.

Another doubt is the following. I'll format the HDD using HFS+, but I'm not sure of what to do with the virtual hard drive format. I'd like to format it with NTFS, but I don't know if there will be any problem with sharing files between host and guest OSs. I'd rather not use FAT32 because I will work with DVD images on XP.

Is there any issue with formating the virtual hdd with NTFS?

 

No issues. NTFS is native Windows file system that using by most of Windows installations (and at first by installations of Parallels Windows VMs)