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Parallels Intel to ARM Clone?

HDJulie

HDJulie

macrumors demi-goddess
Original poster
Jun 13, 2008
933
431
Little Rock, AR
I'm upgrading to a Mac Studio with the M2 chip. I have Parallels on my Intel Mac Pro. One of my VMs is a copy of my late husband's PC image. I know that I can just copy files over after creating an ARM based VM, but I'd like to have a clone -- I want to keep all of my husband's settings, desktop, without having to create it from scratch. Is there no way to convert an Intel VM to an ARM one?
 
HDJulie said:
I'm upgrading to a Mac Studio with the M2 chip. I have Parallels on my Intel Mac Pro. One of my VMs is a copy of my late husband's PC image. I know that I can just copy files over after creating an ARM based VM, but I'd like to have a clone -- I want to keep all of my husband's settings, desktop, without having to create it from scratch. Is there no way to convert an Intel VM to an ARM one?
Click to expand...
No, Windows on ARM is a completely different OS. You can probably do a migration of settings and things though from one computer to the other

Found this when googling. Never done it so can't speak to it working. Looks like the link is also trying to sell a simple tool for doing this as well. Never used it.

3 Ways to Transfer Windows Settings to a New Computer

Are you worried about how to transfer your Windows settings to new computer? We've all been there before. Read our guide to do it with ease.
windowsreport.com
 
It's actually a different version of Windows, so no - you can't copy the VM image directly.

I imagine Windows has something similar to Mac "Migration Assistant" to transfer most settings, etc. Windows on ARM will be Windows 11, so (assuming he didn't use Windows 11 on the existing VM) it won't be "Exactly" as it was but close.
 
Thank you both. I did not know that Windows ARM is Windows 11. I'll probably upgrade his to Windows 11 on the Intel Mac before creating the ARM version.
 
HDJulie said:
Thank you both. I did not know that Windows ARM is Windows 11. I'll probably upgrade his to Windows 11 on the Intel Mac before creating the ARM version.
Click to expand...
It doesn't much matter, you still can't clone the virtual machine from one platform to the other even if both are Win 11.
 
UTM can run Intel windows vms on ARM by emulation, but I'm not sure if there's a way to convert from Parallels to UTM or how the performance will be. You can try it out for free with a new vm just to see if the performance is acceptable.

Here's a thread on converting from Parallels, but I haven't attempted: https://github.com/utmapp/UTM/issues/4927
 
Just make sure you keep a backup of your parallels VM, or copy it and do tests on that. Depending on what you are doing with the VM and what applications you are running you may find some apps are not compatible in Windows ARM.
 
I have like 17 copies of my VMs :). One of them is my late husband's PC image & I sometimes need to run a program as it was on his PC, to find certain information. Plus, I like seeing it, it reminds me of him.

Before I lost him, I was running Parallels from my new iMac because I was responsible for the gate software for our subdivision & there was no Mac version. That has since become not an issue (we changed to an online version), but I still like it because I freaking hate finder & I REALLY hate how it does pictures. So, I keep a Windows VM so I can find files & view pictures (the old fashioned c:\user\pictures folder) the way that I want to. Then, I took advantage of the ability to run Windows & created a VM for my husband's PC so I didn't have to have that additional PC hanging around. It's worked great & I was very happy. So far, it sucks on the ARM VM. So much so that I am considering getting a cheap Windows laptop & just putting the image on it. It's a very minor issue overall & I really like the M2 Max chip in my new Mac Studio
 
HDJulie said:
I'm upgrading to a Mac Studio with the M2 chip. I have Parallels on my Intel Mac Pro. One of my VMs is a copy of my late husband's PC image. I know that I can just copy files over after creating an ARM based VM, but I'd like to have a clone -- I want to keep all of my husband's settings, desktop, without having to create it from scratch. Is there no way to convert an Intel VM to an ARM one?
Click to expand...
Your best bet would be to use either the USMT (User Settings Migration Tool; which is a set of a couple of command line tools that specialize in migrating from Windows machine a to Windows machine b) or a tool that leverages it. There ought to be ARM64 versions of it. Otherwise, you'd need another Intel Mac running Parallels to run the VM. There is no converting an x86 VM to an ARM VM. And, even if there was, you'd need to also convert the guest operating system (which generally is not possible).
 
HDJulie said:
I'm upgrading to a Mac Studio with the M2 chip. I have Parallels on my Intel Mac Pro. One of my VMs is a copy of my late husband's PC image. I know that I can just copy files over after creating an ARM based VM, but I'd like to have a clone -- I want to keep all of my husband's settings, desktop, without having to create it from scratch. Is there no way to convert an Intel VM to an ARM one?
Click to expand...
I also needed to run an Intel VM and my Mac is M2 based. You can do it for under $200. Simply buy a used 2014 Mini with an Intel processor inside. You do not need a keyboard, monitor or mouse. Use Apple's Remote Desktop to access the VM.

You can also have the VM "share" files with the Mac so for simple file access you don't need to go in through the VM, but you could.

The Mini stacks nicely on the top of the Studio.

One other thing I do is run VMs in my Synology NAS. The NAS is a $700+ device but it has a Intel (or AMD) processor and holds much more data then the 2014 Mini. But the Mini is faster and cheaper.

In any case this problem is best solved with hardware and today still usable Intel Mac Minis are cheap as dirt but still small and silent.
 
ChrisA said:
I also needed to run an Intel VM and my Mac is M2 based. You can do it for under $200. Simply buy a used 2014 Mini with an Intel processor inside. You do not need a keyboard, monitor or mouse. Use Apple's Remote Desktop to access the VM.

You can also have the VM "share" files with the Mac so for simple file access you don't need to go in through the VM, but you could.

The Mini stacks nicely on the top of the Studio.

One other thing I do is run VMs in my Synology NAS. The NAS is a $700+ device but it has a Intel (or AMD) processor and holds much more data then the 2014 Mini. But the Mini is faster and cheaper.

In any case this problem is best solved with hardware and today still usable Intel Mac Minis are cheap as dirt but still small and silent.
Click to expand...
That's a good idea. I might try it myself
 
HDJulie said:
I have like 17 copies of my VMs :).
Click to expand...
Really? you have 17 different VMs. You need a good-sized computer for this. The Synology I wrote about would do this if you got one with enough RAM and a large SSD cache.

With 17VMs you have a lot of data and a lot of backupwork. Moving all the VMs to one server allows you to consolidate backups to some cloud servers. And of course, the NAS' RAID allows for one or two disk failures before you lose data.
 
ChrisA said:
Really? you have 17 different VMs. You need a good-sized computer for this. The Synology I wrote about would do this if you got one with enough RAM and a large SSD cache.

With 17VMs you have a lot of data and a lot of backupwork. Moving all the VMs to one server allows you to consolidate backups to some cloud servers. And of course, the NAS' RAID allows for one or two disk failures before you lose data.
Click to expand...
Heh, no, I have several copies of my husband's VM. 17 was being facetious, but I do have probably 5 or 6, across various external drives & back ups.
 
ChrisA said:
I also needed to run an Intel VM and my Mac is M2 based. You can do it for under $200. Simply buy a used 2014 Mini with an Intel processor inside. You do not need a keyboard, monitor or mouse. Use Apple's Remote Desktop to access the VM.

You can also have the VM "share" files with the Mac so for simple file access you don't need to go in through the VM, but you could.

The Mini stacks nicely on the top of the Studio.

One other thing I do is run VMs in my Synology NAS. The NAS is a $700+ device but it has a Intel (or AMD) processor and holds much more data then the 2014 Mini. But the Mini is faster and cheaper.

In any case this problem is best solved with hardware and today still usable Intel Mac Minis are cheap as dirt but still small and silent.
Click to expand...
I decided to try this. I got a late 2014 Mini with 16gb memory & 512 SSD, & am running my husband's PC image & my mother's Mac image. Works great. Thanks for the idea :)
 
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