Parallels Desktop 5 + xp resize error

[cindyhy]

My parallels takes 64G of my hard disk which I don't need. However, when I try to resize (shrink) it, an error pops out (see the pic below). Windows is running on VM. No Boot Camp used. Do I have to reinstall Windows or maybe Parallels all together? Can anyone help me on this? Thanks a lot!

p.s. I've posted this on the Mac Applications folder which didn't get solved. Sorry for multiple posting as I can not move the thread...

 

[MacDawg]

Is this on your internal HDD?
How much free space do you have on the HDD?

 

[cindyhy]

It's on the internal HDD. (Can it be installed on an external one?) I've got about 10G left on my HDD. Btw, I think the 64G on the virtual HDD does not take real disk space if I don't use them, right? If so, then how large it is doesn't make much difference and I may as well just leave it as it is. Thanks MacDawg for replying!

 

[tomllama]

How much space of the 64Gb is actually used in XP?
Is your disk setup as an "expanding disk"?
Does "compress" work?

It's hard to figure out what might be the issue with the limited information provided.

Parallels sees my external drives just fine (SATA, not USB or FW) and work great with the Software RAID established in OS X. The same can not be said for Boot Camp - it only sees the non-RAID internal drives. While a bit slower, the ability to read and write to the OS X drives via Parallels is great.

 

[CylonGlitch]

It depends on the settings. In some modes you can preallocate the space so it doesn't do it on the fly; the default, I think, is for it to grow to your maximum value. Now what size is the image? Go to the directory where Parallels stores the images and find out what the size of the image is. This is approximately the amount of data the image is using; thus you can't reduce the size to less then that value. Windows isn't as forgiving as OSX, it can't adjust the partitions on the fly, but I think Parallels has the ability to take care of it.

 

[cindyhy]

The VM takes only 7 gig of the 64 it is allowed and I wanted to resize the virtual disk to 16. I'm curious of what the "file system" means in the error message. Does it mean a volume of my Mac hdd is bad or the virtual hdd?