Migrate Parallels OS to new Mac mini using TM?

[cameronjpu]

For some reason I fear that when I use TM to migrate one Mac Mini to another one, that there will be some problems with the Windows OS inside Parallels. Should I be worried about this? Or will restoring a new out of the box Mini with a TM backup bring along Parallels and the Windows OS, activated and all that?

Thanks!

 

[cameronjpu]

Err.. bump?

 

[BornAgainMac]

You never want to use TM to backup Parallels OS images or your will fill you your backup drive in no time. TM will backup files when they change. Windows would be one big file that constantly changes. Parallels has a setting to disable the backups or you can exclude them with System Preferences.

Just backup parallel virtual images manually when they they are offline to move them to another Mac.

 

[CylonGlitch]

You can copy the virtual images all over the place, windows doesn't know anything. The system will look exactly the same for windows. That's a great benefit of virtualization.

 

[BrianBaughn]

As stated above you should exclude your Parallels Windows image from your TM backup. TM will be constantly trying to back it up and may miss your Mac files in doing so.

In my experience, using a TM version of a Parallels Windows image on a migration just doesn't work. Best thing to do is to make a backup copy (manually if you wish) of the image in a separate folder on your TM disk. Also, I've found it's best to shut down the Windows machine before the copy is made...don't save a copy of an image in the suspended state.

 

[csjcsj]

I've moved Parallels to two new machines using TM without any problems at all. Both times it started up with Windows without problem and all my data was there.

Is your version of Parallels compatible with the OS version?

 

[BrianBaughn]

I've moved Parallels to two new machines using TM without any problems at all. Both times it started up with Windows without problem and all my data was there.

Is your version of Parallels compatible with the OS version?

The last time I configured it was 4 weeks ago using Lion and the then-current download of Parallels. Consider yourself lucky on that migration.

Backing up a 10GB (or possibly much larger) file every hour is a ridiculous idea, anyway. You could use TimeMachineEditor to change the frequency...but as I said my experience is that it's unreliable.

In an office with 2 or 3 Macs using Parallels or another VM and backing up to the same Time Capsule via wifi, well, nothing would ever get backed up!