Bootcamp Virtual Machine Can't Read Mac Disk

I originally had a Win 7 Virtual Machine that worked fine. I got the crazy idea that it would be better to have a bootcamp installation and virtualize it. So I did. Got the installation to work. Went through the process of reactivating windows and office (if I had known that before I would have skipped it.)

So, now my virtualized bootcamp version of Win 7 will not read my Mac drive. I get the message that drive e:\ needs to be formatted.

I have reinstalled Parallels tools to no avail. Any suggestions?

 

Drive E is probably your Mac partition which is on the same disk as your Windows partition. Windows (while running in Parallels) will think the Mac partition is all zeros (unformatted) unless you add the Mac partition to the Virtual Hard Disk Boot Camp setting but Parallels doesn't let you add Mac partitions to a virtual hard disk with the UI and you won't be able to use the Mac partition in Mac OS X while the virtual machine is running anyway which is probably not what you want.

Instead, you need to use Parallels Shared Folders to access Mac disks while running the Parallels virtual machine. Parallels Shared Folders uses Parallels Tools to talk to the Mac OS and share your Mac files with Windows so both OS's can use the Mac files at the same time like a network file share.

 

Sorry to jump in here, but I just want to ask about this issue.
joevt, are you saying that there is no way of transferring files between the Boot Camp partition and OS X?
So, if have a separate 'Documents' folder on Boot Camp (Parallels) and on OS X, I cannot transfer files between them, and the only solution is to use Shared Folders when all the files go to the OS X 'Documents'?
if that is the case, then how does the Boot Camp partition work when booted not in Parallels but in Boot Camp itself?

 

There are many ways of transferring files between the Boot Camp partition and OS X. What I said was that mounting the Mac partition in Windows under Parallels is not one of those ways.

I think you are confusing the "Shared Folders" option with "Shared Profile" option.

"Shared Folders" lets you see any Mac folder (home folder, all disks, custom folders) in Windows under \\psf\.
\\psf\Home\ is your Mac OS X Home or User folder: ~/
\\psf\Host\ is your Mac OS X startup disk: /
\\psf\Host\Volumes\ is all your Mac OS X disks: /Volumes/
\\psf\ also contains all the custom folders.

"Shared Profile" makes your Windows user folders (Desktop, Documents, Pictures, Music, Movies, Downloads) point at the corresponding Mac folders in \\psf\Home\ so that both Mac and Windows use the same folder.

I usually don't use "Shared Profile" because it's confusing. I like my Virtual PC to behave like a PC. Plus there are issues with using a Mac folder for your Windows user folders.

You can also copy files between the virtual machine and Mac OS X using the "Access Windows folders from Mac" and "Mount virtual disks to Mac desktop" options. The virtual machine's disks will appear in the Mac OS X Finder.

Look at the Sharing options in your virtual machine configuration. Click on the (?) icon for more info.

 

Got it! Thanks a lot for the clarification.

 

You are right about this.