Issue: Creating VM on USB HDD or Network

A

alvins

Junior Member
Hi guys,

Just came across this. I am trying to create the VM on a usb hdd. When I do this it seems to lock up Parallels. Below is a more detailed summary.

Location of VM is on USB HDD. I can boot and install Windows XP up until the point where it has to do its first restart - at this point Parallels locks up (after formating and copying the files).

I did try creating the VM on the internal (macbook pro) hdd and this works fine. After I had WindowsXP installed I moved the VM from internal drive to USB hdd. But again it locks up - this time as it is trying to boot (i.e. straight away). I have to pull out my usb hdd in order to close parallels (force quit does not close it).

Interestingly I then tried to create my VM on a network drive (I have write/read/modify access) but this also fails but this fails straight away saying cannot create VM hdd.

Any ideas?

Cheers,
Alvin
 
hrm...that's interesting. I know that i have gotten it to work flawlessly and i've read posts of others doing the same.

How is your external drive formatted? Has it had any problems in the past? Is it USB 2.0?

Also something that worked well for me was to create a blank DMG and then mount it and save the VM in there...maybe try that on the external drive if all else fails? The nice thing about having it a seperate writeable DMG is that its really easy to check the disk for errors.

HTH,
-Levi
 
> How is your external drive formatted?
FAT32. I have a bootcamp installation of WindowsXP on this drive. Total drive capacity is 18.6Gb. 12Gb free space. How has everybody else formatted their usb hdd? Could you point me to some posts of people putting it on their usb hdd. Can't use ntfs because of no os x writing capability. FAT32 has 2gb file limit.

> Has it had any problems in the past?
No. Interestingly I can create directories and files on this usb hdd inside finder. And can also delete files in finder. But I cannot delete directories - error code 1407. If I go into a terminal and delete that way (rm -rf) no problems. Don't think this is related though.

>Is it USB 2.0?
Yes

I am just trying again to create a vm on the usb hdd this time with image max size of 1.5gb (avoid FAT32 2gb limit) Want to see if this is the problem.

Cheers,
Alvin
 
I too had problems running virtual machines with Win2k on my external USB HDD.

It's a LaCie 250GB formated with MacOS X Jornaled filesystem. I have otherwise no problem with this drive and it's havily used.

Since I created the virtual machine on my internal drive I had much less problems.

I've a Mac Mini Duo.
 
alvins said:
>
I am just trying again to create a vm on the usb hdd this time with image max size of 1.5gb (avoid FAT32 2gb limit) Want to see if this is the problem.
Click to expand...

This is what i was getting at...after the disk expands to a certain size them it may lock up or do weird things. Oh and i'm sorry they mentioned network not External USB, but USB would be faster and *should* work. I know i tried it after setting up a VM and it did work...but that was formatted OS X journaled.

this is one of the threads i was talking about:
http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=398

I have followed the build a blank DMG and write your files into there and have had really good luck with it. Maybe try that and see if it helps. I was doing it because in the early betas PW would kernel panic and corrupt the OS X side of the hard drive.

HTH,
-Levi
 
It sounds like FAT32 may be causing the lock ups.

Try using NTFS instead, if it isn't going to cause you software compatibility issues. I installed Windows XP Pro in a 20 gb VM on a LaCie Firewire drive using NTFS without problems. Fedora Core 5 also installed without problems to a 20 gb VM on the same drive.
 
James Wu said:
It sounds like FAT32 may be causing the lock ups.

Try using NTFS instead, if it isn't going to cause you software compatibility issues. I installed Windows XP Pro in a 20 gb VM on a LaCie Firewire drive using NTFS without problems. Fedora Core 5 also installed without problems to a 20 gb VM on the same drive.
Click to expand...

I was under the impression osx didnt support writing to NTFS drives??
 
It doesn't support writing to NTFS. I had tried to create a VM with expanding disk on a USB drive and I kept getting odd crashes after a while. I tried to create a large non-expanding drive and that process died at a certainpoint with an error about too large a file. It was a FAT32 format drive which has a max file size of 4GB. I redid the drive as HFS+ journalled an have had no more problems (non-expanding file, just in case it matters).
 
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