available space for Parallels/Windows

I am running Parallels 8 on a Retina MacBook Pro 15" with 512 GB of RAM and Windows 8. When I first bought the Mac and Parallels I did not expect to use Windows much so, as I remember, I only allocated 50 GB to Parallels but now I find that I need to use some Windows photo editing tools (specifically Adobe Bridge and Photoshop and some HDR software) and have begun to wonder if I need to allocate more space for Windows. My main problem is I don't know how to determine how much space I may currently be using and don't want to allocate more until I know I am using most of what I already have.

I started the Windows desktop and checked with Windows Explorer to see how much space was reserved for the "C" drive and found, much to my surprise, that it has a capacity of 68 GB with 52 GB in use. If this information really is the space that I allocated for Parallels then I remembered incorrectly and must have allocated more like 70 GB, but I am not sure that this actually is the allocated and in-use space. So, some questions.

1) Is this really the allocated and in-use space? If not, how do I find the actual allocated and in-use space?

2) Could Parallels actually consume more space by automatically expanding as more was need by Windows installations? Or is the size fixed when setup?

3) Windows Explorer tells me that the "C" drive is formatted with NTFS. If I expand the Parallels Windows space for "drive C" manually presumably it must also be NTFS. Can this be done if the two spaces are not contiguous? Or does Parallels somehow move stuff until it can find enough contiguous space?

4) I have not upgraded Windows 8 to 8.1 because I saw no need to do so and hence am still running Parallels 8. But I have received a "service advisory" from Parallels telling me that I will need to upgrade to Parallels 9 if I want to upgrade OS X to Yosemite. Does a Parallels upgrade involve only space used on the OS X part of the disc? Or will it also use more Windows space?

Thanks.

 

Hi MikeFromMesa,

Please Go to VM Configure (http://kb.parallels.com/117287) > Hardware > Hard disk 1 > please check the size of Virtual hard disk and Start Windows, go to Start ► Control Panel ► Administrative Tools ► Computer management ► Disk Management. The size of the main partition (the partition Windows boots from; it is (C by default) should be equal to the size of the Virtual Hard Disk (Hard Disk 1).

The capacity of a virtual hard disk can be set from 100 MB to 2 TB.

Virtual hard disks can be of either plain or expanding format.

Plain: A plain virtual hard disk image file has a fixed size. The size is determined when the disk is created.
Expanding: An expanding virtual hard disk image file is small initially. Its size grows as you add applications and data to the virtual hard disk in the guest OS.

When you create a virtual machine, the disk is created in the expanding format. Please follow the steps suggested at http://kb.parallels.com/113972 to give more hard disk space to Windows Virtual Machine.

 

Thank you for your post. It has addressed almost all of the questions I had and now I know how much space I actually have and that I can expand my Windows space. Without even asking I now know why my Windows space has been eating up my available space on OS X.

The only remaining question is whether installing Parallels 9 will require more Windows space or only more OS X space.

Thank you again.