NTFS or Fat32??

I installed beta 2 and I am unable to install any apps. It said something about not having permissions to write to the disk at first.. now I can't even unpack something. (I am an administrator account, etc...)

Nowhere in the documentation does it say whether to go NTFS or Fat32.. I chose Fat32. Is that what I was supposed to chose? Can I exchange files in NTFS?

I deleted my installation and will reinstall... shoudl I go with Fat32 or NTFS?

Thanks so much!

Charles

 

Fat32 is my choice

Since Mac can't write (only can read) NTFS format, I used Fat32. Performance hit would be minimal.

 

OK... but

I understand that OSX cannot write to NTFS.. but when how are you able to write to any folder in Parallels other than doing the Windows sharing thing in OSX which works fine with NTFS format?

Thanks so much!

Charles

 

Your post is a little confusing. Are you talking about not being able to install applications within the VM itself? In that case it doesn't matter whether you formatted as FAT32 or NTFS. The host cannot (currently anyway) view the contents of the VM HDD directly. You have to set up sharing.

Also, are you sure you are using an administrator account in XP itself?

My guess is that you appear to have run into some other issue. I would say it's unrelated to Parallels.

 

Use NTFS. It doesn't matter to the host machine but NTFS is better ... for Windows anyway.

 

Actually...

Actually I am not running into ANY issue.. I just wanted to know the preferred format. I understand that in Bootcamp Fat32 is good so that you can each read each other's drives, but I don't see that as an option in Parallels... so I was curious why you would go with fat32 over NTFS. I went with NTFS on one machine and now I'm doing Fat32 on another (since I didn't get an answer in time.)

Thanks so much!

Charles

 

I suggest to use NTFS inside Windows guest. It is more efficient, stable, it is supports files >4G and you have more chance to avoid any troubles with guest FS.

 

The filesystem would only be available inside the guest OS because it exists as a disk image, not a physical partition. Therefore it is entirely irrelevant whether OS X supports it or not. Network sharing works regardless of filesystem type, because the OS takes care of the I/O request FIRST, then takes it over the network. This is why even on OS X, a NETWORKED NTFS volume is writable. As such, NTFS is highly recommended.

 

Good point. I chose FAT32 for the OSX write compatibility, but I guess I hadn't thought it completely through. Since I'm accessing the shared folders through a virtual network, might as well take advantage of NTFS.

Parallel is working so well that I haven't used my installed bootcamp at all since PWS came out, so I'll probably blow away the bootcamp partition soon, create a larger PWS virtual drive, and format it with NTFS.

 

I saw a suggestion earlier tonight about why to use FAT32 inside of PWS...

Apparently you can rename the virtual disk to a .DMG extension and mount it under OS X.

I haven't tried this yet, so it may be complete bunk

 

I know something like this is possible with Q (you know, the OS X port of QEMU), if you use a fixed-size disk image.

 

Wow. learning something new everyday!
Nice.

 

Hrm. Well I just tried this and had no luck. Maybe there's no reason at all to have a fat32 device