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Parallels for Mac is best known as one of the easiest ways to run Windows apps on your Mac without needing to boot into a separate mode from macOS. Starting from version 14, Parallels Desktop will periodically check free disk space left in the virtual hard disk and offer to increase (resize) hard disk via macOS notifications. To increase virtual hard disk size, do the following. Jan 06, 2007 There are things you can do: 1) Copy the.vmdk over to Linux/Windows, and run vmware-vdiskmanager to make the disk larger. Then copy it back, boot the VM, and tell Windows to extend its partition to use the new empty space at the end of the virtual disk.
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Parallels Desktop 1.0 for Mac OS X
Developer: Parallels (product page)
System requirements: Any Mac with an Intel CPU, Mac OS X 10.4.6, 512MB of RAM, 30MB free drive space
Price: US$79.99 (US$49.99 through July 15)
Developer: Parallels (product page)
System requirements: Any Mac with an Intel CPU, Mac OS X 10.4.6, 512MB of RAM, 30MB free drive space
Price: US$79.99 (US$49.99 through July 15)
Move over emulation, virtualization is in and it's hotter than two Jessica Albas wresting the devil himself in a pit of molten steel. It's no contest, virtualization has it all: multiple operating systems running on the same machine at nearly the full speed of the host's processor with each system seamlessly networking with the next. Add to that the fact that it's cheaper than getting a new machine and you have the guaranteed latest craze. Not even the Hula Hoop can stop this one.
Okay, virtualization isn't totally new–it's just new to Macs and Parallels Desktop is the first out the door with a 1.0 product for Mactels. For those that are just getting to the party, here's a bit of a breakdown on virtualization. The idea is that program acts as a virtual machine (VM) and its job is to bethe PC (one of the more boring drama classes), tricking the client OS into thinking it's inside a real x86 machine with a physical hard drive, keyboard, Ethernet card, etc., when in reality, it's merely grabbing unused CPU cycles and RAM inside another OS to do it's thing.
The benefits are pretty clear over a real PC: It's running on the Mac you know and love but you're not sacrificing access to the occasional Windows-only app that you might need. Maybe you have a copy of Office XP for Windows and don't want to shell out for the Mac version. Sure, you could load up Apple's Boot Camp, but using a program like Parallels–or its competitors VMWare, WINE and MS' Virtual PC–means you don't have to reboot just to use that accounting program at work.
It is a great prospect and now even Apple is recommending running Parallels on their Get A Mac site:
That's the corporate equivalent of Jesus endorsing your sandals. Click for high res.
When that page went up, the price of Parallels not-so-coincidentally went up from $50 to $80, so let this be a lesson to us all: never say 'wow, that's so cheap' on a public forum again. Still, that's still cheaper than the $129 charges for the Virtual PC standalone package and if it works as advertised, it's hard to compare the two. Parallels promises to be a big upgrade from the pokey and painful Virtual PC emulation. So let's see if it's the cheap and fast hydra PC we've all been waiting for.
Minimum requirements
- Any Intel Mac (doesn't require a machine with VT-x support)
- A minimum of 512 MB of RAM, 1 GB recommended
- 30 MB of available HD space for Parallels plus enough room for the VM OS
- OS X 10.4.6
Test Hardware
- MacBook Pro 2.0
- 2 GB RAM
- OS X 10.4.6 / 10.4.7 (both tested)
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Active2 years, 4 months ago
In Parallels Desktop 12.2.0 on MacOS 10.12.4, a Windows 10 VM is taking up over 170GB of mystery space. Windows only sees a 128GB drive. But Parallels claims to be using 300GB on hard disks.
It's not snapshots-- Parallels reports only 22GB for snapshots. It's not multiple disks-- Parallels reports only one hard disk. It's not unpartitioned space on the Windows side-- Windows reports no significant unpartitioned space. It's not multiple VMs because Parallels reports only one VM, which I've confirmed by seeing only one 346GB VM file in Finder.
But the space is definitely getting chewed up, because my Mac is low on disk space. WTF? Anyone know where that mystery 170GB is being used, and how to free it up?
Justin Grant
Justin GrantJustin Grant23411 gold badge33 silver badges1818 bronze badges
1 Answer
After a long chat with Parallels support followed by my own investigation, it turns out that the mystery disk space is taken up by snapshots. But Parallels apparently has a bug where it's not correctly reporting the full disk space cost of snapshots. By deleting some snapshots I was able to reclaim much of the mystery disk space.
Here's more details. Apparently Parallels stores snapshots in two places: inside your VM's
.pvm
file (go to /Users/YourName/Documents/Parallels
, find the .pvm
file, right click on it, and choose 'Show Package Contents') : - in a
Snapshots
folder, which is what's measured by the green Snapshots area in the General tab of Parallels VM configuration. - inside the
.hdd
file that contains the actual hard disk data. If you right-click on this file and choose Show Package Contents, you'll see one.hds
file for each snapshot that you have stored. These files are not included in the green Snapshots area in the General tab of Parallels VM configuration.
Parallels For Mac Resize Hard Drive Space
I deleted several old snapshots using the Snapshot manager, and that freed up 100GB in just a few minutes. Removing each snapshot removed one 10GB+
.hds
file from inside the .hdd
file.I did see cases in the Parallels forums where old snapshots didn't show up in Snapshot Manager but were still using up disk space. Apparently there's a Terminal-based way to fix that problem. I'm pasting links here in case others run across that variant of the problem:
both linking to:
I was disappointed in Parallels for not accurately measuring the true disk cost of snapshots. Had Parallels correctly noted that snapshots were taking up 200GB vs. 128GB for real disk space, the solution (delete some snapshots, dummy!) would have been obvious. Instead I wasted hours trying to troubleshoot what could have been a simple problem to resolve.
The support engineer I worked with claimed that this incorrect measurement is not a Parallels bug. I'll leave it up to you to decide if you agree with him. ;-)
klanomath51.4k77 gold badges7676 silver badges144144 bronze badges
Parallels For Mac Resize Hard Drive Space Mac
Justin GrantJustin Grant23411 gold badge33 silver badges1818 bronze badges