Mac Pro & Parallels 5 - too many hard drives?

[HHarm]

I got bad performance from VMware Fusion (tearing etc) so I made switch to Parallels Desktop 5.

It's certainly better but I have a weird problem. My HD setup is 2 x SSD raid0 as a boot drive for OSX, a single SSD for Windows 7, a 1TB drive for files and another 1TB drive for Time Machine. That's a total of five HDs - so one of the SSDs is in the optical drive bay.


I got Parallels installed ok, but if I boot OSX and restart Parallels I get the following message: (the disk name varies)


The Boot Camp partition ”/dev/disk1s2” used by Hard Disk 1 is not supported.

Please open the virtual machine configuration and select a supported Boot Camp partition in the Hard Disk 1 setting.


When I go to Virtual Machine / Configuration / Hardware / Hard Disk 1 I only see two HD's. Also their number varies from time to time. If I choose the other disk that's visible Parallels starts fine. If I log out of Windows and restart Parallels it works fine. But again, if I reboot OSX then the same things happens again.


The help files says:

Note: You can connect up to four IDE devices (hard disks or CD/DVD drives) and 15 SCSI devices to a virtual machine. Each device is listed separately in the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog and has its own number.


Does the limit of four IDE HDs also mean the SATA drives? Anyway... I took the two 1TB drives away to drop to the four drives. If one of the SSDs is in the optical bay I get the error _sometimes_. If all the three SDD are on the HD bays then it works fine. Weird.


Anybody have an idea what's the problem is and how I'll solve it? If necessary I can live without the two 1TB drives working in Windows, but of course I'll need them in OSX.

 

[codymac]

Anybody have an idea what's the problem is and how I'll solve it? If necessary I can live without the two 1TB drives working in Windows, but of course I'll need them in OSX.

I'm guessing, since I'm a VMWare user and not a Parallels user - but I have a similar issue with VMWare. I'll explain my issue, and since you're a former VMWare user, it should make some sense.

When OSX reboots, my XP partition can end up mounted on a different device path (/dev/diskXsX) and VMWare can no longer find the drive associated with the VM (since it's hardcoded in the VM config). All I have to do, since I'm too lazy to "correct" the mount issue, is to edit the VM to point to the correct device path for where my target disk is mounted.

Alternatively, I can delete the VM for the BootCamp partition and add it back in, but then VMWare doesn't see that VMWare Tools is installed, takes time to "ready the partition," etc.

Check to see what the device path is when it's working, and check it after a reboot to confirm/eliminate the possibility of a similar issue with your config.

I haven't tried to configure my VM to use the logical disk path as an alternative, but that might be a simple way to resolve it, (use /Volumes/disk_name rather than /dev/diskXsX). Hmmm....

 

[HHarm]

I edited the config.pvs file in the virtual machine file.

I changed:

<Partition>
<SystemName>/dev/disk1s2</SystemName>
</Partition>

to ->

<Partition>
<SystemName>/Volumes/Windows</SystemName>
</Partition>

It didn't help.


Inside the virtual machine file there is small file called INTEL SSDSA2M080G2GC (disk1).hdd

There is a reference in the config file to it:

<SystemName>INTEL SSDSA2M080G2GC (disk1).hdd</SystemName>
<UserFriendlyName>INTEL SSDSA2M080G2GC (disk1)</UserFriendlyName>

Maybe I should change the file name (+references) but I don't know what to.

 

[codymac]

Sounds like Parallels handles things a bit differently then. Might be worth trying to change the partition to the corrected device path (assuming it is changing on you too). That might not get you any further though.

Just thought I'd throw my VMWare experiences into the ring to see if it helped.

 

[tomllama]

I run with 4 interal SATA drives and 5 in a SATA PM enclosure without issue.
bay 1 is OSX boot, bay 2 is bootcamp, bay 3 & 4 are RAID 1 OSX drives and the 5 drives in the PM enclosure are a mix software RAID 1 and individual drives. All are used just fine by Parallels. Boot Camp does not see the internal software RAID (as expected) nor does it see the eSATA card or the external drives but Parallels using the boot camp 'partition' does.

 

[HHarm]

After a lengthy email exchange with Parallels support I finally got the answer:

"Indeed we have this issue reported to development team and it shoudl be solved in future updates of Parallels Desktop.

Currently Parallels Desktop does not recognize mount point of Boot Camp partition.
When you restart Mac and mount point for Boot Camp partition changes, in configuration of Virtual Machine you still have old setting.

In new build Parallels Desktop shoudl automatically detect changes and change configuration file.
For now there is workaround - each time after reboot change configuration of Virtual machine (assign Boot Camp partition)"

 

[db1]

is Parallels fixed yet?

I haven't seen a response regarding Parallels impending fix - In new build Parallels Desktop shoudl automatically detect changes and change configuration file. Anyone know if it is fixed? in version 5 or 6?

Question for Tomllama regarding

I run with 4 interal SATA drives and 5 in a SATA PM enclosure without issue.
bay 1 is OSX boot, bay 2 is bootcamp, bay 3 & 4 are RAID 1 OSX drives and the 5 drives in the PM enclosure are a mix software RAID 1 and individual drives. All are used just fine by Parallels. Boot Camp does not see the internal software RAID (as expected) nor does it see the eSATA card or the external drives but Parallels using the boot camp 'partition' does.

Can you share with me the mechanics of how you got you system set up as you did? did you have to install the OS in bay 2 - then create bootcamp- then erase the os partition and reinstall in bay 1? how did you get windows cleanly to its own drive? If i connect an external raid 5 drive which shows itself to the mac pro as one volume do you think bootcamp/ windows could see it so i could access the data? or would it too be a raid create problem - meaning bootcamp wont be able to see it?

thanks