I'm preparing to install Parallels on a new iMac to run Windows 7 Pro. Is there any need or performance advantage to create an NTFS partition for installing Windows 7 in a VM?
Hi JamesM8, There is no need for you to create an NTFS partition to install Windows as Parallels Desktop is Mac application which will not work on an NTFS partition. Parallels Desktop will create a virtual machine inside that it will create a virtual hard disk inside that Windows will get installed. All these files will be created as a package and saved as a file with an extension .pvm (Parallels virtual machine) on your Mac hard disk. It is similar to Microsoft Office Word, you can create a document and open that with MS Office. Similarly, a PVM created by Parallels Desktop on your Mac can be accessed using Parallels Desktop. Let us know if you have more questions.
I know that this isn't 100% true. I understand that Parallels is a Mac application, but Windows isn't. On my MacBook Pro I had a Bootcamp partition with Windows 8.1 installed. I eventually installed Parallels and accessed the 8.1 Bootcamp installation through Parallels so I wasn't rebooting my computer to access Windows. To this day on my MacBook Pro, Windows 8.1 is reading/writing into the Bootcamp NTFS partition. Since I know that it's not required to have an NTFS partition, let me modify my question. Is there a performance advantage in creating an NTFS partition for Windows to operate in when running it through a Parallels VM?
