Installation of WD My Book external drive

Dear All,

Firstly happy new year to all!

Having receievd a nice new Western Digital 500MB external drive for christmas (My Book Studio Edition) I would like to install this on my Vista Guest O/S, which is resident on my iMAC O/S 10.5.6. I have connected the Firewire 800 interface connection and though this drive can be seen on the MAC side I want to use it on the guest O/S side via Parallels. (I have Parallels version 3 installed at the moment)

How do I make parallels reconginse this external disk (via Firewire 800 if poss) I know the drive isformatted with a HFS+ partition and obviously this file system is not compatible with Windows based computer systems therefore the hard drive will need to be repartitioned and reformatted. However, I cannot get the Vista guest O/S to recognise it in the first instance so I can re-format it? Is this becuase I should only use a USB connection and not FireWire 800?

Any help would be appreciated

Thanks and regards
Kevin

 

Use Shared Folders

 

Hi John,

I'm not sure how this answers the issue of whether I need to use a Firewire 800 connection Vs USB to recognise the drive in the Guest O/S in the first instance? Are you suggesting adding more Guest O/S folders as Shred folders and then back them up via the MAC side?

Regards
Kevin

 

Firewire devices are not supported in any virtualization software for the this time,
In order to keep access to this drive, and not to reformat drive, you need to use Shared Folders
Or another way
USe Firewire to USB adapter http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-firewire-to-usb-adapter.htm
and reformat drive in either NTFS, or FAT32
or use MacDrive to access that drive, if you do not want to reformat it

 

Hi John,

Many thanks for the information and clarification

Kind regards
Kevin

 

Sharing my Windows C drive to MAc

Hi John,

Sorry to keep bothering you on this issue. I can see my MAC .home folder on .psf on the windows guest side ok, but cannot seem to see my Windows C: drive or selected folder on the MAC side. I tried setting this via 'Parallels Desktop' -> Devices->Shared FOlders -> Add And though it appears to take the C: drive selection it does not appear anywhere onthe MAC side.

Should be setting this up a different way?

Regards
Kevin

 

Check that Show on Desktop is selected,
Also you can always access it
through right click on pvm file -Show package contents- Windows Disk - C

 

Sorry John, you have lost me here.. I don't understand what you mean. I'm trying to see my Guess O/S shared folder on the MAC via Parellels. If you could please provide a more instuction on this method setting it up I would appreciate it

Sorry to be a pain, but I need to access Windows files on the MAC

Regards
kevin

 

Setting Up Shared Folders

A shared folder is a folder on your Mac that can be accessed from your virtual machine. Such folders can be used for exchanging files between the primary OS (Mac OS X) and the virtual machine or between several virtual machines. You can also share the virtual machine volumes with Mac OS X - they will be mounted on the Mac OS X Desktop.

In the operating system, where a shared folder resides, it appears as a usual folder, while in the OS it is shared to, it appears as an object of the network neighborhood.

A shared folder or volume resides on the computer (host computer or a virtual machine) to which it initially belongs. It means, that it occupies space on the hard disk of the computer or virtual machine it originally belongs to.

Using shared folders is possible in the following guest operating systems:

Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows Vista
Linux operating systems supported by Parallels Desktop as guest OSs. See the list of supported guest operating systems.
Setting up a shared folder requires two steps:

Make sure that Parallels Tools are installed in your guest OS. See Installing Parallels Tools for detailed descriptions on how to do so in a particular guest OS.
Add a shared folder(s) to your virtual machine configuration. For the instruction on how to do that, see Shared Folders Settings.
Adding a Shared Folder
Start Parallels Desktop and open a virtual machine.
Open the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog by:
choosing Configure from the Virtual Machine menu, or
clicking the Configure button on the toolbar of the virtual machine main window.
In the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog, select the Shared Folders pane. Enable the User-defined folders option to be able to add shared folders to the list.
Click the Add button . The Add Shared Folder dialog will appear.
In the Add Shared Folder dialog:
Specify a folder in the Mac OS X file system that will be shared in the Path field.
Specify a name for the folder which will appear in your guest OS in the Name field.
Provide a description for the shared folder if needed in the Description field.
If you want to restrict writing to this folder from inside the guest OS, select the Read-Only option. You will be able to save files to this folder in Mac OS X only.
Make sure the Enabled option is selected and click OK.

Click OK in the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog to save the changes and quit the dialog.
Now you can start your virtual machine and view the shared folders in the guest OS.
Viewing Shared Folders in Windows Guest OS
After you have created a shared folder, start your Windows virtual machine and you will see the Parallels Shared Folders shortcut on the Windows desktop.
Double-clicking this shortcut will lead you to the \\.psf directory where all your shared folders are stored.
Note: To be able to save files to a shared folder from inside the virtual machine, make sure that the Read-Only option is disabled.

Viewing Shared Folders in Linux Guest OS
After you have created a shared folder, start your Linux virtual machine.
Shared folders will be automatically mounted to the /media/psf or /mnt/psf directory upon the virtual machine start.
Note: Automatic mounting may be blocked by SELinux. For more information, refer the Setting up Shared Folders in a Linux Virtual Machine section.

Setting up inverse sharing
If you want to access your virtual machine's volumes from Mac OS X, you can enable inverse sharing. To do so:

Start Parallels Desktop and open a virtual machine.
Open the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog by:
choosing Configure from the Virtual Machine menu, or
clicking the Configure button on the toolbar of the virtual machine main window.
In the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog, select the Shared Folders pane and enable the Mount virtual disks to Mac OS X desktop option.
The virtual machine's volumes will be accessible from Mac OS X desktop where they will appear as connected volumes.

Note: If the virtual machine's volumes are not mounted on Mac OS X desktop, go to Finder > Preferences > General and make sure that the Connected servers option is selected.

 

Many Thanks

Hi John,

Thanks for our detailed response. I can now see my Guest O/S mounted on the MAC. The only point in the instruction which did not follow, was that it would not let me go into VM configuration whilst the Parallels Desktop Vitual Machine was started, so I did this part and added the share before starting it, via going into Applications -> Parellels -> Parallels Desktop. I can see my Guess O/S now mounted on the MAC. I assume this is ok.

One last question, I enabled R/W permissions from within the Vista folder I shared, should I need to alter any permissions within the MAC as well?

Many thanks for all your help
Regards
Kevin

 

You do not need to change any permissions on mac OS side