Running v3 and v4 on the same mac

I'd like to go slowly in this migration. Can I have both versions installed, and simply duplicate VMs, let v4 upgrade one of the dups, and play until I'm satisfied? Can both versions co-exist on the same drive? Storage capacity is not a problem.

 

Unfortunately it is not possible. Installing Parallels Desktop 4 will not proceed before removing Parallels Desktop 3.0.

 

So I should clone my hard drive, and make backup copies of all of my VMs prior to the install. Pretty much SOP here for any major change, and weekly backups via Retrospect, but thought Parallels might play in nice sandboxes.

I'll go get a spare 1.5Tb Seagate external with the multiple interfaces tomorrow -- it's on sale for less than $.20/Gb. Clone things and move on from there. Thanks for the warning.

 

Be advised that it is *strongly* recommended to uninstall Parallels Tools v.3, any and all antivirus/security software and custom drivers (i.e. drivers that were not installed with Windows) from your Virtual Machine prior to upgrading - it can pretty much make or break an upgrade.