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Bootcamp in Parallels or just Parallels?
- Thread starter Qwerty11
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Depends what you want to use Windows for, but with that much machine you could dedicate 2 cores and 6 to 8GB RAM for the virtual machine and it's going to run pretty darn fast....fast enough for pretty much anything you'd want to do except hard core gaming or video rendering.
Gaming = bootcamp
Everything else = try it in parallels (so you don't need to reboot into windows)
Everything else = try it in parallels (so you don't need to reboot into windows)
Parallels within Parallels? What is this Inception?
You can either use an existing Boot Camp partition with Parallels or you can create a new VM using Parallels.
OK, I think there are some terminology issues at play here. I think what you're asking is:
1) Should you create a BootCamp partition and install Windows there, or
2) Install Windows as a pure virtual machine within Parallels.
With Option 1, you go into Disk Utility and create a BootCamp partition on your Hard Drive. Once created, this disk space can only be used for Windows. You then use the Boot Camp assistant to install Windows into this new partition.
There really is only one advantage to creating a BootCamp partition. It gives you two different ways to run windows. You can run the BootCamp partition within Parallels (ie Mac and Windows running side-by-side), or at boot you can hold down the option key and decide to boot your machine directly into Windows. The main reason people might want to boot directly into Windows would be if you wanted to run PC-based games. My guess is that if you're not a gamer, you probably don't want to bother with BootCamp. There are some downsides, among them: it's a lot more work to back up your BootCamp partition. You'll need to use WinClone or something like it to make periodic snapshots, and you'll need to make sure the BootCamp partition is NTFS formatted.
If you're not a gamer, you're probably better off going with the simpler option (2).
Hope this helps.
1) Should you create a BootCamp partition and install Windows there, or
2) Install Windows as a pure virtual machine within Parallels.
With Option 1, you go into Disk Utility and create a BootCamp partition on your Hard Drive. Once created, this disk space can only be used for Windows. You then use the Boot Camp assistant to install Windows into this new partition.
There really is only one advantage to creating a BootCamp partition. It gives you two different ways to run windows. You can run the BootCamp partition within Parallels (ie Mac and Windows running side-by-side), or at boot you can hold down the option key and decide to boot your machine directly into Windows. The main reason people might want to boot directly into Windows would be if you wanted to run PC-based games. My guess is that if you're not a gamer, you probably don't want to bother with BootCamp. There are some downsides, among them: it's a lot more work to back up your BootCamp partition. You'll need to use WinClone or something like it to make periodic snapshots, and you'll need to make sure the BootCamp partition is NTFS formatted.
If you're not a gamer, you're probably better off going with the simpler option (2).
Hope this helps.
Awesome, thanks for the reply! So what are the pros and cons with running bootcamp in parallels vs just running parallels?
Have you been reading the replies in your own thread?
Bootcamp = faster windows performance
Parallels = slower windows performance
Bootcamp has nothing to do with Parallels. They are 2 separate entities.
Pretty much every reply about running boot camp and Parallels has been about running the boot camp partition within Parallels.
It means you can use ONE windows install for both purposes - one install to do windows update on, etc.
However, bootcamp will consume more space. You need to pre-allocate it all and it is no longer available to OS X.
A non-bootcamp VM can be thin provisioned (i.e., you tell it to use a maximum of 100gb, and if it is only using 20gb of its 100gb allocation, it only takes 20gb from OS X).