Using an External Hard Drive in Parallels

The FAT formatting may well be your problem. You are limited in file size to 2GB. I think that if you reformat your external as Mac OS Extended you will solve your problems. That's the setup I have on an external USB drive and it works great.

Interesting predicament....

I am converting from PC to Mac. Just bought a Mac Pro that
is due to arrive in a few days.

I have two external Maxtor One Touch II drives. Each is
250 - 300 gigs.

Will these show up under Macintosh OS X and/or Windows
under Parallels?

That really depends on what you have done with the hard drives so far. Have you attached these to a Windows system yet? And if you did, were they ready to use or did you (have to) format them? I haven't looked at the specs on the One Touch systems. In any case, they should be able to be seen by OS X, but there you also have options to reformat the drives. What is your goal for these and your setup, including Windows?

Have had these drives hooked up to Windows.

Formatted? Not sure. One I *think* was formatted
through Windows, the other was ready to go.

I mostly use them to store pictures, music and video.

Will they be readable in Macintosh OS X and/or Windows
under Parallels via a USB connection?

NJRonbo said:

Have had these drives hooked up to Windows.

Formatted? Not sure. One I *think* was formatted
through Windows, the other was ready to go.

Click to expand...

They have to be formatted in order to be used.
Look at them and see if they are FAT32 or NTFS

I mostly use them to store pictures, music and video.

Will they be readable in Macintosh OS X and/or Windows
under Parallels via a USB connection?

Click to expand...

If they are FAT32 then they will be readable and writable by OS X
If they are NTFS then they are readable only by OS X.

Parallels may be able to read/write them via USB, but only if you are using the latest beta/RC release, I believe. I have my external USB drives formatted as Mac OS Extended, so this isn't something I can speak for personally.

I found this forum b/c i've been having the same problem. But since then i have figured it out. My drive is formated NTFS though i don't think that has anything to do with it.

I got mine to work in this way:
Plug in your USB2 HD
Open Parallels
Click "USB controller" in the XP virtual machine configuration page. Make sure device status is "Enabled".
In the parallels menu bar go to Devices > USB > USB2.0 Mass Storage (or whatever your drive is called.

the drive should unmount from mac OS and show up in windows.

NTFS is supposed to be faster and more reliable, i figured i needed every bit of good karma for running windows in Boot Camp, for gaming. By mounting the drive in Parallels i can now add files to windows drives formated NTFS. So I'm pretty happy.

Anyway, good luck in getting it to work.

sorry for the double post

accessing external drive simultaneously from both OSs

Does anybody know if it's possible to see the external drive directly from both the mac osx and the windows VM simultaneously? I can see it fine from either one, but not from both.

"Please insert dics into drive e."

I got mine to work in this way:
Plug in your USB2 HD
Open Parallels
Click "USB controller" in the XP virtual machine configuration page. Make sure device status is "Enabled".
In the parallels menu bar go to Devices > USB > USB2.0 Mass Storage (or whatever your drive is called.

the drive should unmount from mac OS and show up in windows.

Click to expand...

I did the above and all that showed up was an extra "drive e." in "my computer". When I clicked on it, i get the message "please insert a disc into drive e" ??

what now? I have a MBP with a acomdate external harddrive.

Help!