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Junipe

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 26, 2011
5
0
I want to be able to run parallels on my Imac but i don't want to use up much space on my hard drive. but i do have an empty external hard drive at my disposal. i want to know if i can install and run parallels off of the external hard drive, and if i cant to that then at least install windows onto the external drive and run it through parallels. if either is possible or if anything close is possible then please either tell me how to step by step or post a link to instructions. I searched on my own and i couldn't find anything. Thank you all in advance.
 
Yes, you can run your Parallels virtual machines from any hard drive. It's been a while since I installed a virtual machine with either Parallels or VMware. By default, it will install on your main hard drive. But during the installation you should have the option to select a different location. There should be some button that offers advanced options. At worst, you can always install it "normally" and then copy it over to the drive you want and delete the original. You can just click on it in the new location to start up the VM; Parallels will know to open it in the same way your music player would still know to open an mp3 if you moved it.

I remember that if you did this with VMware, you'd get a message asking if you moved or copied the VM. The right answer was "moved," as I believe it was more complicated in some way if you kept both copies.

Also, the VM is a big file, so the external drive you move it to shouldn't be formatted FAT32 as it can't deal with files >4GB.


It's not really that complicated. Just install Parallels and follow the directions to create a new VM.
 
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