Accessing Windows Virtual Drives

[MichaelD34]

I have not come across anything that resembles a direct correlation to this question so I will make the inquiry. While a Windows 10 VM is running, is there a way for macOS to access the virtual drives in Windows 10?

My need for this comes from an issue that recently occurred with JMP where it is saving everything to the JMP application folder in the Program Files folder on the C drive instead of the directories I select on my mounted work volume. I edit the SVG files exported from JMP in Affinity Designer (Mac), but I have no obvious means to open a file that has been saved to the virtual C drive from macOS.

Can this be done?

 

[KebhaK@Parallels]

I have not come across anything that resembles a direct correlation to this question so I will make the inquiry. While a Windows 10 VM is running, is there a way for macOS to access the virtual drives in Windows 10?

My need for this comes from an issue that recently occurred with JMP where it is saving everything to the JMP application folder in the Program Files folder on the C drive instead of the directories I select on my mounted work volume. I edit the SVG files exported from JMP in Affinity Designer (Mac), but I have no obvious means to open a file that has been saved to the virtual C drive from macOS.

Can this be done?

Hi @MichaelD34 , If sharing is enabled then your Mac applications can access Windows virtual machine's drive. If you wish to avoid this issue then you can isolate Windows virtual machine by following steps in this article. By performing these steps will make your Windows virtual machine a separate entity and Mac folders or Mac applications will not be shared to your Windows virtual machine.

 

[MichaelD34]

Thanks for your response.

As I am not connected to a network working from home, shared items were not displayed in my Finder sidebar. When I went into the Parallels configuration panel after seeing you response, I actually had a face palm moment when I actually bothered to read the text above the checkboxes. (I cannot believe that there is no Unicode emoji for face palm!) Worse, I should have known, as Windows 10 sees the mounted Mac volumes as network drives, so it stands to reason that virtual Windows drives would be seen as network drives in macOS.

Once I enabled the display of connected servers, the Windows 10 C drive appeared. I knew that I had to be missing something, as a Google search on this matter turned up several inquiries about accessing the virtual drives when the virtual machine is not running, thus implying that such access is possible when the VM is running. Hence, the problem of trying to figure out how to do something under duress.