Moving to External HD

I just recently purchased an external hard drive (My Passport Studio 640 GB) and I was wonder what the best way would be to move my previously installed VM on my MacBook Pro to my external hard drive allowing it to boot from there. Is it as simple as moving the files under /users/sparsel/Parallels to my eternal as well as changing the default folder to one on my external in the preferences? Thanks!

 

Jup. Just copy the VM package to the external drive and delete the package on your internal drive (maybe wait with emptying the trash until you've made sure that everything's working). Once it's there, double-click on it to register it with Parallels. Parallels will ask you whether you've moved or copied the VM - say "move". The "old" Vm will show up with a question mark in your VM list; right-click on it and select "delete".

That's really all there is to it. I'm running my VMs off an external USB drive and that's faster than running them off the internal drive - I have an MBAir and I guess that machine's internal drive is relatively slow.

 

I'm intrigued -- not so much for speed inmprovement but for portability. I use 3 VMs at work, and would prefer to use those same instances on my home machine rather than the separate set of VMs installed there. Would I be able to run those same VMs on both machines?

Thanks -- Val

 

Afaik yes - but each time you use a VM on another machine you'll be asked if you've moved or copied it. That's a bit annoying. I guess that Parallels is updating some parameters inside the VM to indicate where that thing was last run.