I'm new to parallels, so I'm a bit confused about the install process. I had always thought that a new drive location would be created for the install, but I don't see any such option when installing guest lion. During installation I only have the option to install the guest os onto my main boot drive... should it be installed into my main drive? I'm scared it will write over my stuff on my main drive... am I missing something? thanks
When you create a new virtual machine, Parallels creates a virtual hard disk for it. Your Lion guest will be installed to the virtual hard disk. The virtual hard disk may have the same name "Macintosh HD" as your main boot drive but it is not your main boot drive. It will not contain the files of your main boot drive and it will probably be a different size than your main boot drive (default size is 64 GB). Verify this by looking at the Hard Disk 1 settings of the virtual machine. Before starting the installation, You can select "Customize settings before installation" to change things such as RAM size and hard disk settings, etc. The virtual machine file has a file extension of .pvm. If you right click it in the Finder and select Show package contents, then you'll see the virtual hard disk inside (file extension of .hdd). The .hdd file is also a package with additional files containing a description of the virtual hard disk, and the contents of the virtual hard disk and any snapshots that might exist for the virtual machine.
