Time Machine and Parallels

[mstgkillr]

I am trying to exclude Parallels during my Time Machine backups but I would still like to backup the actual data from Quicken, Excel, Word, etc...

Do I exclude Parallels under Applications or Documents?

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I am trying to follow this...

"Additionally, I do not include my virtual machines in the Time Machine backup, since they are quite large and small modifications to them can result in the entire VM image being backed up again and again, to the point where they could take up most of the TM disk space and force older backups to be removed. I have the virtual machines backed up elsewhere, and also do not rely on them so if they were to be lost I could set them up again quickly with no harm done."

BUT I still want the actual data, especially the Quicken files. I don't mind reinstalling the application but I have to backup the files.

 

[tillsbury]

You can't back up just the data in your windows machine. If you want stuff in windows backed up, save the documents on to your host drive (using sharing in parallels). That way they're sitting in OSX ready to back up. The entire Windows machine is a single file on OSX, which Time Machine can only back up in its entirety (or not at all if you exclude it).

Or, set Windows Backup to back up your (windows) data somewhere, perhaps to a folder on your OSX (host) drive? Then it will do it when you're in Windows and it'll be nearly instant if it's just documents from one part of the drive to another.

 

[KevinC867]

You can't back up just the data in your windows machine. If you want stuff in windows backed up, save the documents on to your host drive (using sharing in parallels). That way they're sitting in OSX ready to back up. The entire Windows machine is a single file on OSX, which Time Machine can only back up in its entirety (or not at all if you exclude it).

Or, set Windows Backup to back up your (windows) data somewhere, perhaps to a folder on your OSX (host) drive? Then it will do it when you're in Windows and it'll be nearly instant if it's just documents from one part of the drive to another.

Good advice. I keep my Quicken files stored on the shared OSX drive. I also do a nightly incremental clone using SuperDuper to augment my Time Machine backups. That backs up my VM without creating a new copy of a 10GB file every hour.

Yet another approach is to use DropBox to backup your important files and sync them to your Mac, your Windows VM and even your iOS devices.

 

[katmeef]

Or use the simplest approach and choose optimize for time machine in parallels. After using this option I had one full backup of the PVM, and otherwise it's just doing small backups based on the snapshots parallels is periodically creating.

http://kb.parallels.com/8827

"Parallels Desktop for Mac includes improved integration with Time Machine.*
When backing up the virtual machine, it will only backup the recent changes (the latest snapshot), but not the whole virtual hard drive.
Thus, the backup process will take less time and use less space on your Time Machine storage device.

To enable improved integration with Time Machine, please go to Virtual Machine Configuration, choose Options and hit Backup.

Select "Optimize for Time Machine" in SmartGuard menu."