How to move a .pvm to real partition?

Hi,

How can I move my Windows 7 .pvm to a partition I've created using disk utility? This is a separate physical partition on the internal hard drive. I would like to be able to occasionally boot from it however mostly use it as a VM. Is this possible? If not, how is this done?

I'm on a Macbook Pro running 10.6.6. Parallels Build 6.0.11822.


Thank you!

Eric

 

Same question here

I'd love to have an answer, too.

I'm still searching for it on the 'net...

 

As far as I know this can't be done using Parallels itself.

One option would be to create a system image from the built in Windows 7 backup tool. This allows you to restore a machine with exactly the same setup, apps, data etc.

I would then create a new installation of Windows 7 using boot camp, then restore the image you took from inside your Windows 7 VM. Once you know it is working you can then create a new VM in Parallels, and choose to create it from the boot camp partition.

Once you are happy you can then delete the original pvm file, you will be left with a boot camp installation, and a new VM which uses that bootcamp partition.

As far as I know you can't do a direct PVM to Boot Camp install (Which is what you need to have the option of booting into windows directly AND running it as a VM as and when you need to)

 

Unfortunately, in my case, the SuperDrive from my ancient iMac cannot read most disks, and bootable USB flash drives aren't supported. This seriously limits my ability to install Windows first, and then get Parallels to recognize the Boot Camp partition :-(

All I can use are .ISO files to install anything. Or, well, I could convert existing .pvm's to a hard disk partition.

There is apparently a solution using a competing product which I'm going to try...