Mountain Lion virtual machine: installing applications and moving files

[audax2]

Hi guys

In August last year I bought a mid-2011 iMac i5 2.7. I used Migration Assistant to import all my applications and files from my old iMac, which was running Snow Leopard, to the new iMac.

I now wish to downgrade to Snow Leopard as my main OS on the new iMaC, but I need to retain access to Mountain Lion by running it as a virtual machine, using Parallels 8 running in Snow Leopard.

I have partitioned my internal HDD into two volumes, one running Snow Leopard, and the other running Mountain Lion. Both volumes are backed up to external HDDs

I know how use Parallels to create a new virtual Mountain Lion machine in Snow Leopard.

What I can’t figure out, despite some hours searching, is how to move the applications and files from my physical Mountain Lion volume to the virtual Mountain Lion volume.

Specifically, I need to know the following:

(1) How to install the software that is included with a new Mac, e.g. iTunes, iPhoto, etc.

(2) How to install Apple or third party software that was purchased on disk.

(3) How to install Apple or third party software downloaded from the internet.

(4) How to move all the files from the original ML installation to the ML installation running in Parallels.

(5) Whether there is any way some or all of the above can be done by using Migration Assistant?


Thanks

Allan

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

@audax2:
I use VMware Fusion, not Parallels. Parallels supports shared folders, which you can use to transfer files between the OS X VM and your real OS X machine. The only problem, which i see in VMware Fusion is, that the virtual filesystem (the folder filesystem) does not support locked files. It is also possible that such virtual file systems have a size limitation (2 GB or 4 GB).

I use a separate folder as a shared folder, so that software which runs within the VM can see only the contents of the shared folder. I copy software updates from:
http://support.apple.com/downloads/
in the shared folder, and install the software updates in the VM.