Hi, i am looking to install XP onto a USB 2.0 external 160gb drive. I have done a search and found some interesting information but im still not satisfied. Could someone just run through the things i should be aware of? Storage formats etc. Cheers
It doesn't matter what sort of disk you are installing on as Parallels uses a single file to emulate a hard drive. Just attach the USB drive to the Mac as any other, format HFS+, put whatever there you want, and then simple put the VM with its disk image (.pvs and .hdd files) on that drive instead of in their default location (~/Library/Parallels/ location). If you wanted to install directly on the drive, then no go, as Parallels doesn't support use of raw disks. Also, Windows XP will not install to a USB drive on a regular PC without some real hackery, so attempting to do it under Parallels using the emulated USB connection would most likely not work in addition to being completely pointless since you can just put the hdd file there.
Ok, so you are saying i create the virtual disk on the usb drive, then follow the steps, with windows being installed on the virtual drive? Also where should i place the configuration file? Cheers
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. I'd suggest storing the config file (.pvs) on the same drive as the virtual hard disk image (.hdd) so that you can easy lauch the thing on a second computer if so inclined, i.e. working on it at home then just shutdown the VM and move disk to laptop and go somewhere else and then fire up that session again seamlessly.
