Please enable MacDrive 6 support

Why doesn't MacDrive work in Parallels? I think enabling MacDrive would be a more elegant solution to sharing files with the rest of your Mac than the shared folder approach.

 

What is MacDrive? What is the underlying technology that is specific to MacDrive?

 

MacDrive is a program that allows a computer running Windows to see Mac drives (nome omen ). It works great on a stand alone PC and in Boot Camp, but not in Parallels. If it did work in Parallels you would be able to see all your Mac partitions as drives (E:, F:..etc.), and you would be able to write to them.

 

The problem is this would almost certainly corrupt the partitions. You cannot have 2 OS seeing the same partition at the same time, unless you are running a cluster filing system, e.g. OCFS2.

 

I know this is a very 'techie' kind of description, but here is what the VMware guru has to say about using host OS partitions directly buy a Guest OS - regardless of either platform. Maybe this can put to rest this constantly recurring topic.

<<<
It is the responsibility of software choosing to mount a storage object to lock it but, on Windows the typical examples are pretty good about it. NTFS.SYS and VMware, to the best of my knowledge, both lock storage objects that they mount. Therefore, VMware won't expose a device with a mounted host file system as a device to a guest. Files themselves aren't really important here. For most current file systems, two drivers mounting the same file system will corrupt the file system structure by operating without awareness or consideration of the other instance. So, the Linux with NTFS drivers and XP with NTFS drivers anecdote that you make actually describes the worst of all worlds. If VMware exposed a storage device to the guest and that storage device was also exposed to the host and the device had a NTFS file system on it and both host and guest mounted it then you can pretty much expect wreckage in short order. The commonly used way to resolve this is to have the file system mounted only once and use a service that is a client of the file system driver act as a proxy for end-users. This is pretty much a description of network file sharing.
>>>

Posted by dmair on the VMware forums - but applies to any virtualization/emulation product that has existed so far in the personal computer world.

P.S. - This guy has posted thousands of very insightful, accurate, and useful posts on their forum. Read and learn!

 

Amen. Still, it would be nice if a shared folder could be assigned a drive letter automatically. I've set each of my mac partitions and my external NTFS formatted hd as shared folders, but right now I have to drill through 3 layers to get to them.

 

A shared folder can be assigned a drive letter. Just share it on the network and connect to it as a network share.

 

I knew that. I'm just too lazy to do it myself.

 

The problem is running MacDrive under Bootcamp

hello. To clarify what many users are having problems is using the macdrive drivers under bootcamp, not under parallels.

There is no need to use MacDrive under parallels since the shared folders is there to the rescue, but somehow after intalling the Parallels Botcamp tools macdrive stopped working under bootcamp , causing a headache to the users who rely on bootcamp for CPU intensive graphic apps like myself.


I contcacted the guys at mediafour, and this was their answer:

 

Do you mean MacDrive will not function when running in Boot Camp? That stinks. I hope the Parallels team addresses this issue in the next rev. While running Windows in Parallels is fine for casual use (e.g., office apps), there are occasions where bootcamping is the preferred/only way to go (e.g., you need to burn a CD with Nero).

 

Y'know, folks, this subject seems to me to have been pretty well exhausted on this wish list. The point has been made and any discussion probably belongs on a technical list.

FWIW, MacDrive works fine if you boot directly into XP from the bootcamp partition, and will not work if you boot XP from Parallels. If OSX is running on your hardware, MacDrive will not work. This is not within the capability of the Parallels folks to change, so let's drop it, OK? It's a fundamental issue and if you understand how MacDrive and filesystems work, you will know this is a waste of time. It cannot work.

 

It would help to read the entire thread before deciding to make holier-than-though remarks.

I've already resigned myself to the fact that MacDrive or MacDrive-like functionality wiil not work in Parallels. In my last message I was questioning the previous poster if Parallels Tools insatlled on the Boot Camp partion screws up MacDrive in Boot Camp.

And FYI, the Wish Lists forum is not exactly overruning with references to MacDrive. I've only found one other thread where MacDrive was mentioned, and even then it was mentioned only in passing.

 

Reiterate

I just want to reiterate what has been said because I have the exact same problem.

MacDrive under BOOTCAMP does not work. To be clear it does not work for the boot camp drive. It works fine if I plug in my Mac Formatted external drive, just not the boot camp drive.

My guess is that the Parallels team put it in there to keep us from doing something stupid, like trying to use it on a boot camp disk when running under Parallels, which would most likely result in data corruption. I appreciate their thoughtfulness, but it's not necessary. Please allow us to use MacDrive under BootCamp. If you like, feel free to go the extra mile and disable it [for the boot disk] when running under Parallels, just put it back when we boot native.

Thanks!

 

This topic has been brought up under the title of 'direct access to hard drives', which has exactly the same meaning as macdrive. This doesn't seem to be clear to some folks.

There is no possibility to have two OSs have the ability to access the same hard drive partition, except as networked devices. It is not a capability that exists in an current (common) pc/mac OSs. It was never planned for, never thought about, and was not implemented in even a crude way in any of them. Maybe sometime when all of the proprietary OSs go away, and some co-operative software development happens - it can be done. Regardless, IT IS NOT PARALLELS' problem to solve.

Sorry if I sound 'holier-than-tho', but continually requesting for an impossible feature is wasting bandwidth.

 

Drive letters are assigned inside of windoze by executing a proprietary dialog. I'ld rather the Parallels folk spend their time on something besides reverse engineering windoze internals to create a feature that is commonly done by windoze users quite often.

 

you can do that now

OpmI usedt IrfanView to look at images on the mac without problem
until I tried an edit (it crashed )


Menu
file
open file
browse

go in through shared folders and out onto the desktop

Hugh W

 

I agree if this was actually the problem. However, this is not the problem that alot of the people in here are complaining about. The problem I'm having is this (and aparently otheres)... so read carefully...

Bootcamp partition WITH OUT the Parallels BootCamp tools installed, booted into Bootcamp, MacDrive does work. Woohoo!

Bootcamp partion WITH the Parallels BootCamp tools installed, booted into Bootcamp, MacDrive does NOT work. Boohoo!

There is only one OS that is operating, hence the reason why MacDrive works in the first attempt. And, again, there is only one OS operating on the second attempt, where as the only difference is the Parallels BootCamp tools, but MacDrive does not work.

So, my addition to this wish list is: please, Parallels, Make it such that when booted into Bootcamp and when the Bootcamp partition has the Parallels BootCamp tools installed, that those of us who utilize MacDrive can see the drives that we could before installing the Parallels BootCamp tools.

Thank you.

 

There seems to be multiple topics going on, and I'm not all that familiar with the current status of using a bootcamp partition under Parallels. There is the same reality however that once you decide to use your windoze installation under Parallels, you have to realize that it is only possible by manipulating the windoze installation so that it becomes 'virtualized' - hence the presence of Parallels Tools. The bootcamp tools only have the possibility to alter a windoze installation so that it can appear to Parallels as a virtual OS. This is the same problem that occurs when dealing with M$s need to confirm that their monoply OS is not being used on a different machine. You can't have your cake and eat it too - according to billygoat and jobs - not me or joem. Come to grips with the facts that you run a proprietary OS and you are trying to run another proprietary OS under it. Parallels cannot solve universal problems under the condition of closed source. They were asked to allow use of a bootcamp partition and they responded positively. Now you want to reverse that service for some other reason, and you will not accept the many explainations of why what you are asking is at best an extreamly difficult problem that has not been solved by several other virtualization efforts, and realistically is a pile of worms whose solution is only conceptionally useful.

 

So, what you are saying is that becasue someone made something that is difficult that the end users should not ask to have it work better and not push developers to make their product better for the users that support them?

I don't feel that what I'm asking for is too difficult. If it turns out to be so, then fine - whatever. However, how is Parallels ever supposed to know what features and capabilities us users want if we don't post about them?

 

You are misunderstanding the issue entirely, or choosing to see it differently in order to pontificate about M$ shortcomings, which is like selling snowballs to eskimos on this forum (shrug).

Let me break this down another way for you -- as of when the above posts were written, installing Parallels tools in a working Boot Camp partition broke MacDrive. Please note -- nobody cares about whether it functions inside a Parallels VM, that is not what's being referred to here. We care that when we hard-boot into Boot Camp (which some of us must still do), MacDrive (as of the above posts) no longer functioned correctly.

As of Build 3094 this is fixed -- as per the installation instructions, simply uninstall "Parallels Tools for Boot Camp" while booted into XP under Boot Camp, then boot MacOS, install Build 3094, and it installs the new Parallels Tools. Voila, now when you reboot back into Boot Camp, MacDrive once again is functional. Thank you Parallels!