Migrating a domain account

I am working on migrating a PC onto a MacBook Pro 15" Retina. The PC is joined to a domain, which turns out to make the migration quite difficult.

The current PC is too big to move using Transporter. When I attempt to move the files using Migration Assistant, I can't see the user that I'm trying to migrate. The only way I've found to migrate the files (besides doing it manually) is to use the Windows Easy Transfer from within a newly created VM on the new computer. I need to NOT transfer some of the files, in order to fit into the new SSD hard drive.

I attempted a transfer using Easy Transfer last night, and something happened that I had not anticipated. Because I'm currently not on the domain, I migrated to the locally-created user on the macbook (which appears to have also been created in the Windows 7 guest). This somehow made all of the user files available to both Mac and PC. So, as an IT guy (who is very familiar with virtualization, since I help manage a VMWare environment), my first question is, where, exactly, did the files wind up? Are they on the Mac disk, or on the PC disk (It looks like they're on the Mac side of things, by I was migrating from within Windows)? I'm sure Paralles didn't create multiple copies.

What I want (I think, from all my reading) is to have all my data files land on a virtualized "data" drive that is attached to both the Mac and the guest OS. That way (again, from all my reading), Time Machine can back up the files and they can be moved from Virtual machine to virtual machine as Windows matures rapidly over the next few months.

Is the right (better) way to do this to first create the guest PC, then join it to the domain, and then do the transfer? What about user accounts? Do I need to attach the Mac OS to the domain as well, first? I'm also expecting that I should start over on the new machine, both with the VM and with the Mac, deleting the user accounts I started with last night and establishing some new ones so I don't get extra copies of my data.

There are plenty of options available to me - I'm just trying to figure out the "best practices" to make my data most flexible between the two OSes, and allow me the greatest flexibility as the inevitable Windows changes come our way.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

-Kevin

 

Hi Kevin,
Your files should end up as a .pvm file. You should be able to access the .pvm file by searching in your finder window or checking
under Documents - Parallels or User - Shared - Parallels (I keep mine on an external drive).
In answer to one of your other questions you may have Shared Profile selected in Options.
To check if this is the case:
Select your VM, but do not turn it on.
go to Actions - Configure - Options - Sharing - uncheck Shared Profile.
this should remove the windows folder on your MacBook Pro.
If you don't want any applications shared between your vm and your mac:
go to Applications - uncheck Share Windows application with Mac
Under Advanced you can select Copy & Paste or not.
Kat

 

Knowledge base information about backing up your system with time machine http://kb.parallels.com/en/8827