Unable to connect to Hard disk 1-Parallels 7

tineg · Sep 3, 2013

Hello,
I have had Parallels desktop 7 on my Leopard Mac 10.6. and been using it to run my windows 7 on it for some time now until it all of the sudden says that it cant connect to hard disk 1.
I dont understand. "Yesterday" it worked fine, today is gone. Everyday I use it the same way for application I need.
I tried to make a backup for *.pvm file, I tried to backup *hdd file within pvm file. Cant solve the problem or I dont know how to.

So, as far as I read, everything is ok with PD 7. It is the Macintosh disk that might be corrupt where virtual windows are.

So, I am wondering if I create New virtual windows, will I delete the previous image of virtual windows?

And does anyone have or know of a solution how to get Hard disk 1 connected again?
Please Help!
thanks, tineg

MacForScience · Sep 3, 2013

Do you have a time machine backup of the .pvm?

Have you run disk utility on your Mac to verify the disk to make sure you don't have any disk corruption?

Are you experiencing any other odd issues such as: missing files, etc?

Cheers

tineg · Sep 3, 2013

Unable to connect Hard Disk 1

I dont think so and I am not sure. I was reading a little bit on here and I noticed that a lot of solutions are written based on installing Parallels Desktop thru Mac's Boot Camp Assistant.
I didnt install my virtual windows like that. I just installed Parallels7 for Mac and based on that I installed Virtual Windows.
so, I am not really sure what you are asking. To be honest I am little new at this stuff. I know my way around but still new.

I just ran the Verify Disk as I have never ran it before. It says that Macintosh HD appears to be ok.

No, no missing files or anything. One day, as any other day, I started Parallels and started Virtual windows and I got the message

""Unable to connect Hard Disk 1"
A file or device required for the operation of Hard Disk 1 does not exist or is used by another process, or you have no permission to access it. The virtual machine will continue running, but the device will be disconnected."

And I havent been able to restore those virtual windows since. What I did just notice is I have 22GB of free space left (out of 1TB). But I am guessing that shouldnt be an issue?

Now I created new image. Read this article about how I can save data from the image and I guess start over but I really dont want to start over. I would rather like to fix,repair,restore and continue. Because of work I have done and set up.

Thanks for your reply and questions.

Bear · Sep 4, 2013

tineg said:
...
And I havent been able to restore those virtual windows since. What I did just notice is I have 22GB of free space left (out of 1TB). But I am guessing that shouldnt be an issue?
...

Shouldn't be an issue and isn't an issue are two separate things. See if you can free up about 100GB and see if you still have the issue.

For best operation of your system, you really want somewhere between 10% and 20% free space on your system disk.

I would recommend restarting your system before attempting the disk cleanup as that will clear the temp files and perhaps make finding enough free space of your disk easier. Although if you can easily clear the 100GB without restarting the system, go for it.

tineg · Sep 8, 2013

I cleaned up to 230 GB of free space. Still have an issue.
Now I get following messages:

Unable to connect Hard Disk 1
A file or device required for the operation of Hard Disk 1 does not exist or is used by another process, or you have no permission to access it. The virtual machine will continue running, but the device will be disconnected.

Unable to connect CD/DVD1
A file or device required for the operation of CD/DVD 1 does not exist or is used by another process, or you have no permission to access it. The virtual machine will continue running, but the device will be disconnected.

There is no operating system installed in this virtual machine. Please insert an operating system installation CD into the optical drive of your Mac and restart the virtual machine.

Which isn't true. There is a virtual windows *.pvm present. If I run the installation CD it will make a new installation not repair the one I want.

And ends with this pic.

ifmihai · Aug 3, 2014

just for reference, solution

I just had this issue.
After investigating on internet and this forum,
it boiled down to permissions to *.hdd files

1. go to your *.pvm virtual machine file
2. right click on it => get info => ensure permissions are to read/write AND ensure 'locked' checkbox is not set (this was my pb)
3. right click => show package contents
4. select all files => get info
5. repeat step 2 with these files
6. right click on .hdd file => show package contents
7. repeat step 2 with these files

if you still cannot use your virtual machine now,
at least you can mount your virtual machine to extract data (this is what i did, enough for me)

To mount your virtual machine
1. go to pvm file
2. right click => show package contents
3. right click on .hdd file => open with => parallels mounter
4. your windows drive will be mounted to your devices
5. you should be able to browse through now

Defgunt · Sep 24, 2014

Having the same problem, was working Sunday, open it Monday and get the error message:

""Unable to connect Hard Disk 1"
A file or device required for the operation of Hard Disk 1 does not exist or is used by another process, or you have no permission to access it. The virtual machine will continue running, but the device will be disconnected."

All 'help' by parallels support has done nothing. I followed your steps, ifmihai, but trying to mount the hdd gives me 'Unable to get write access to the virtual hard disk.' even though all files have read & write enabled.

I found the file i need to back up on the drive, once i can copy that, i can reinstall.

----------

Having the same problem, was working Sunday, open it Monday and get the error message:

""Unable to connect Hard Disk 1"
A file or device required for the operation of Hard Disk 1 does not exist or is used by another process, or you have no permission to access it. The virtual machine will continue running, but the device will be disconnected."

All 'help' by parallels support has done nothing. I followed your steps, ifmihai, but trying to mount the hdd gives me 'Unable to get write access to the virtual hard disk.' even though all files have read & write enabled.

I found the file i need to back up on the drive, once i can copy that, i can reinstall.

J-Pro · Sep 29, 2015

I just had the same issue. And the reason was "frozen VM". I have found it when I decided to auto-update my Parallels and popup said that I need to exit "Parallels Virtual Machine" first. How to force it to quit? See http://kb.parallels.com/en/6338

Hope it helps.

jamestbennett · Apr 5, 2018

You just save me.

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Unable to connect to Hard disk 1-Parallels 7

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