Sorry if this has been covered before - I just did a bit of searching but possibly wasn't choosing the right combination of words. I've got Parallels Desktop build 3188 running on my MacBook Pro. I use it all day, every day (I'm a Windows software developer who prefers to work on his Mac). Recently I've been thinking about having some kind of backup machine, just in case the lappy dies and I have to wait a day or two for Applecare to sort it out. I've got a pile of last-generation PC parts kicking around (Athlon 2400 type class) and got to thinking that I could get a basic XP PC up and running with those parts. Now, at the moment every night I dump my Parallels .hdd file to my network (about a 30Gb file copy). It occured to me that if Parallels Desktop and Parallels Workstation (ie, on the Mac and on Windows) actually shared the same .hdd file format, I could buy a copy of Parallels Workstation and put myself in a position where, should the Mac ever barf, I could just fire up the PC, load Parallels Workstation and start using the most recent .hdd file I had backed up on the network. While it's not ideal, that's cheaper than buying another MacBook Pro! Can anyone confirm that the files are compatible? I would understand that the memory dump information probably isn't the same between the platforms, but learning to shut the virtual machine down properly every night is no biggie at all if it means I can fall back on running the same vm in Windows. I hope this has made sense...
That's great news. Thanks, and I really appreciate the quick response too! Keep up the good work, folks!
