Help Me Understand Parallels File Sharing...

I am a new user or, more accurately, soon to be new user of Parallels, so please have some patience with me…in preparation for installing Parallels I have read the User’s Guide and am confused by the poor description / explanation of Share Files and Folders as contained on page 63 to 67 of the User’s Guide.

I would appreciate assistance in understanding the following:




SET MAC OS X AND WINDOWS TO USE THE SAME FOLDERS


Question 1.
If I select Parallels --> Virtual Machine --> Configure --> Options --> Sharing --> and select “Share Mac user folders with Windows” then, according to the manual,
…your Mac OS X Desktop, Documents, Pictures, Music, Movies and Downloads folders are merged with the corresponding Windows folders, and the MAC OS X Trash is merged with the Windows Recycle Bin…

Is i) it the case that MAC OS X’s “user folders” [i.e. Desktop, Pictures, Music, Movies and Downloads] are truly merged with the Windows “user folders” [i.e. the contents of the two are consistently mirrored which would not make sense to me because this, for example, would result in MAC OS X Desktop icons appearing on the Windows Desktop and vice versa] OR ii) is it the case that the MAC OS X user folders appear as “network drives / folders” within Windows [i.e. MAC OS X user folders are connected / mapped to a Windows network drive and the “share name” of these folders all end in “psf”.


Question 2
In the Parallels --> Virtual Machine --> Configure --> Options --> Sharing window what is the difference between i) Share Folders and ii) Share Profile in the “Share Mac” sub-window?

Is it i) that Share Folders is used to share any folders other than the user folders while Share Profile is used to share the user files OR ii) that Share Folders and Share Profile are simply different avenues or methods of setting shares [which, should this be the case, then what is the point] OR iii) other which escapes me?.


Question 3
If I make a change to a MAC OS X file that is located in a shared file then is it automatically / instantaneously updated in Windows and, if not, then how / when is it updated?



Question 4
MAC OS X files are stored in HFS+ format while Windows files are stored in NTFS format.

Is it the case that Parallels therefore contains a driver which enables Windows to read / write to HFS+ formatted shared folders and, if not, then how does this work?



ACCESS A WINDOWS FOLDER OR FILE FROM A MAC OS X APPLICATION


Question 1
MAC OS X files are stored in HFS+ format while Windows files are stored in NTFS format.

Is it the case that Parallels therefore contains a driver which enables MAC OS X to read / write to NTFS shared folders and, if not, then how does this work?


Question 2

In the Parallels --> Virtual Machine --> Configure --> Options --> Sharing “Share Windows” sub-menu why are there options for both i) Access Windows folders from Mac and ii) Mount virtual disks to Mac desktop.

Is it not the case that by selecting Access Windows folders from Mac is all that is needed because how would one access / navigate the Windows drive without first mounting it? Please explain.


Is it not the case that by selecting Access Windows folders from Mac is all that is needed because how would one access / navigate the Windows drive without first mounting it? Please explain.


Thanks in advance for your assistance.




Joel

Bump, a response would be greatly appreciated as I want to make sure that I understand how this works to avoid doing something that creates a ton of problems...

Thanks in advance,


Joel

pennant said:

I cannot answer all your questions, but from my own experience, I had all sorts of difficulty accessing files stored in the Mac folders from within Windows 7 operating under Parallels. To get things to work properly under Windows 7, I eventually copied the data files onto a folder under the C:/ drive of the Virtual Machine (PC) created by Parallels, but even then the functionality of certain Windows based programmes was affected by the underlying Mac operating system. For example, I had the Windows 7 system set to the UK date format, i.e. day/month/year but when I opened files with dates, such as an Excel file, the date format changed to month/day/year, so that 1st June 20012 became, 6th January 2012. What caused that was the default settings under System Preferences on the Mac, which clearly was over-riding the Windows 7 system settings.

Trying to access the files on the simulated C:/ drive from the Mac platform was also problematic as I could only read the files but not edit them and couldn't find out why that was happening. So you end up with two copies of the file, one on the Mac folder and the other on the simulated C:/ folder, but obviously that is not good practice!

I have since scrapped Parallels and wont use it again. To much time and effort trying to get the Mac to operate like a PC.

regards


John

Click to expand...

John, appreciate your response and note that your experience was clearly frustrating and not encouraging. In respect of your specific points I would note the following:

1. I have read the Parallels manual and do not believe that you can access the files that are stored in the VM’s drive [i.e. C:/] unless they are specifically shared.

It is my understanding that i) the VM can only see those Mac drives / folders which are setup and shares and appear as network drives in Windows 7 and ii) in turn, the Mac side can only access files that the VM stores in those same drives or other folders that have been specifically set up as shared drives.

It is my view – recognizing that I have not yet used Parallels let alone a Mac – that the ideal use of Parallels is to store all files on the “Mac side” meaning that from within the VM all files should be stored in the “network” / “shared” folders.


2. In terms of the “date issue” would it not have been solvable to simply change the date format / settings in the Mac but I guess that you had a reason not to.

3. In terms of the suggestion that you would have never purchased a Mac had you know then what you know now, I would appreciate you further explaining what you mean that you could not get your Mac to work like a PC because while I understand that the paradigms are different I would have thought that one would have nonetheless been able to accomplish one’s tasks.

Thanks,


Joel

pennant said:

On file sharing, it is probably better to give specific examples of problems. OK I had Windows 7 running under Parallels and downloaded Page Plus X6 which is a desk-top publishing programme from Serrif.com. My Page Plus data files were copied to a folder in the Mac, but when I tried to open the data files, I lost content such a indexes, footnotes, cross references and some graphic images. The file was very large as it contained 220 pages of reference material that was combined into a book.

I then moved the Page Plus data files to the C:/drive of the Virtual Machine setting up an indentical directory structure to the one I previously had on my PC. My reasoning was that perhaps Page Plus was searching for some files in a specific location which had obviously changed when the files were moved to the Mac. However I got the same result in that the file opened and most of the content was there, except the indexes, some footnotes, cross references and some graphic images.

Incidentally I did a similar exercise to move all the Page Plus files from a desk-top PC to a lap-top PC and everything worked perfectly. No loss of content. So I am at a loss to understand why that happened while running the programme under Parallels. Spent a lot of time and effort trying to get it to work without success.

You can actually access most files on the Mac folders from the Windows platform under Parallels, but I found that some files would not open and can only presume that it was due to some compatability issues.

You can also open files in the Virtual C:/ drive from within the Mac platform but they all opened as read-only files and I could not edit them. I checked all the file sharing protocols and they seemed to be set correctly, but I had to go back into Parallels and Windows to edit the files on the virtual C:/ drive.

The date function was easy to correct once I realised what was happening, but the point is that the underlying System Preferences of the Mac were over-riding the system settings on Windows running under Parallels, which may account for some of the issues that I encountered, but I cannot be sure.

I have since consigned Parallels to the "Too Hard" trash can!

regards - John

Click to expand...

John, this sounds like a disaster and, should I run into a similar experience the Mac will be returned within the two week window....the only true concern I have is finding the time to work test everything out.

Thanks,


Joel