Parallels Hard Drive Question

[saj042]

Hey guys, so I needed to use Autocad for my architecture class and midway through the install I stopped it because I had to leave and didn't want to let it go by itself and it said I can resume later. So I came back later and it restarted everything instead but didn't give me back any hard drive space. I had some issues with it so I reinstalled it and again it took space from me. I then uninstalled the whole thing but barely got any space back. I just started using Parallels and I'm not sure how to get back all this hard drive space it took up. Since installing Autocad, it's taken up 10 gigs that I can't get back. Any suggestions? I turned off system restore on XP if that helps. Thanks

 

[steveza]

Parallels creates a file which acts a a virtual hard drive. If you said that the drive should be 10GB in size then it will create a 10GB file irrespective of the amount of data stored on that virtual drive. If you said that the drive should grow dynamically then it will increase in size as you install more software - as far as I know deleting data will not reduce the file size.

You should probably use boot camp for CAD stuff anyway - it will run like a dog in Parallels.