I can't figure this out from the FAQs and guides at parellels.com. Can anyone tell me if there is a way to mount in OS X the disk images used by the guest OS? This is possible in Virtual PC. In the absence of shared folders, a really easy way to share files is to shut down the guest OS, and mount the disk image in OS X. My goal of using Parallels Workstation would be to get some GIS software working on my Macbook--which means having GB of files available to the guest OS. Using networking to copy files seems very cumbersome.
Look here on instructions on how to convert a dmg to iso: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20040121135301830
So I guess what I didn't understand is that disk images for parallels workstation are in .iso format? Thanks for the tip.
DO NOT CHAGE THE .HDD EXTENSION TO .DMG OR.ISO!!! It still will not mount under OSX, but when you change the extension back to .hdd Parallels does not recognise it. I have just lost a perfectly good XP installation by doing just that! Do any of the nice Parallels people on this forum know how I might get Parallels to recognise the .hdd file again???
Got it back. Under 'get info' the iso extension was still appended after the .hdd. Deleted it and all is now fine. Phheww!
But these iso images are read only on Mac OSX, so it does not help with moving files back and forth between Mac and the XP on Parallels. I was totally unable to create read and write iso image file on OSX (10.4.6). I wonder if the PC-Mac-Net FileShare Lite v6.0.2 could do the trick of getting files back and forth between OS X and the XP. Keep in mind that my XP disk was initialized by the defauld NTSP (or whatever it's called) and not by the FAT32. I wonder if that matters or causes the ISO images to be read ony. I also find that if I copy some text on Mac OSX, there is nothing to paste into IE browser URL field under XP. So the supposedly working copy and paste does not seem to work for me. So, I"m still stuck in sharing any data between the Ma and the XP.
Well, I got file sharing working fairly easily. On my PW image with XP, I created a directory called "Temp" and turned on full file sharing for that folder. I then looked up the IP address of the XP machine in Control Panel --> Networking. In my case, I already knew the IP address because I had it set up as a fixed IP. I then click on the Mac desktop and hit CMD-K. In the server address section, type: smb://yourwindowsIPaddress/Temp/ A dialog will appear asking you to enter your name and password (of your user ID set on XP). Enter that and the share will mount to your desktop. Simple - now copy away. Caveat - obviously, you need to have XP running for this to work.
See here http://forum.parallels.com/thread280.html I just set this up in PVM I "USE" a Sub on the OSX disk Called "WINFILES" I installed all my files there and instructed WinXP to Move my Home Folder (MY DOCUMENTS) there and use it also as my "DISK D:" i.e. I installed office and all my apps there!! So from OSX I just write things in there PVM DOES not have to be running, also I can read all the files and docs from there (I also have). This allows me to have a small WinXP "Drive", I am using this just as one would do when the XP box was using a network drive... dont really see whats so difficult chaps.. an advantage is also if the .hdd file is corrupted NOTHING is lost..!!
It has been widely written (I have no direct experience) that NTFS is read-only when mounted under Mac OS X. If you have a chance to try with a FAT-32 file system, I'd love to hear the results.
I have been working on this for the last few days, and today I have a partial solution. For pure off-line access to the file, run the following command. This will only work if your *.hdd image file is a "plain virtual hard disk". If it is not one already, then you need to convert it to one with the Parallels Image Tool. hdiutil attach -imagekey diskimage-class=CRawDiskImage myfile.hdd Since the plain image files are just iso images, then the above command will mount any filesystems that are found in the image. The example that I used for testing was a fat12 filesystem for a Dos 6.22 virtual machine that I have installed. If Mac OS X can recognize the file format, then it should get mounted. You can play around with the other hdiutil options, man hdiutil, for ways to alter the behavior further. I tried to get hdiutil to work with one of the expanding images, but non of the diskimage-classes were working. Someone else may have better luck. Changes in the mounted filesystem, at least for my tests, do not seem to take effect until the filesystem is unmounted. So you will want to avoid having the filesystem mounted while Parallels is using it. It would be nice to have real-time read-write access, but for now, I am happy with offline access. I hope this helps.
Just wanted to mention that if you do this, change notification/file locking doesn't seem to work properly. Not a big deal for some people but a limitation to bear in mind. Depends if you have 2 windows programs that try to access the same file at the same time (I haven't had file corruption, but I have had error messages)
