Any way to Boot up Parallels Monterey VM from an APFS volume

[BrettS12]

Hello all,
I had recently installed macOS Monterey onto an added APFS volume on my Mac. I can restart my MacBook to boot from this HDD volume (macOS Monterey) or my normal AppleOS (BigSur11.6). Is there a way to install a macOS VM and point the HDD to the already configured APFS volume with Monterey installed? I want to be able to completely boot my MacBook into Monterey, do any work or adjustments, restart into my normal OS (bigger) and run Monterey in parallels VM and have it reflect the changes I made when running as primary OS.

I hope that made sense. I am able to do this exact function when using my bootcamp partition and windows 10, hoping to run the macOS betas side by side or exclusively when desired.

 

[AlexR16]

Hi BrettS12, sorry, but I'm not totally sure what you mean.

I think you're asking if Parallels can utilise a physical hard disk partition that the native laptop can also boot from (but not at the same time) then yes, it can, but with restrictions.

If that physical partition is not seen by parallels as being an internal partition ie. it has to be connected by Thunderbolt/USB/Firewire/sSATA and not a partition on an internal Mac hard disk, then Parallels can utilise it for a guest.

It sounds like you've added an additional bootable partition to the internal hard disk of your MacBook and Parallels will not allow you to select that as being something that can be used by a virtual guest.

If the disk is "external" (I do the same with a thunderbolt connected disk on one Mac and a PCI hosted NVME on another (which even though it's internal to the Mac is still seen as being external due to it not being SATA)), then Parallels Desktop will allow you to select the disk as a guest disk and the physical Mac will also allow you to select it as a native boot disk, so you can accomplish your requirement (if I've understood you correctly).

A second additional partition on a internal hard disk will not suit your needs, it needs to be something truly external ie. USB-C/Thunderbolt pen drive or SSD