Hard Disk Settings

To view and configure the virtual hard disk settings, use the Hard Disk pane of Virtual Machine Configuration. The current version of Parallels Desktop allows virtual machines to use hard disk images in the .hdd format and Windows Boot Camp partitions.

Note: You can connect up to four IDE devices (hard disks or CD/DVD drives) and 15 SCSI devices to a virtual machine. Each device is listed separately in the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog and has its own number.

In the Source field, the virtual hard disk file (.hdd) that emulates the virtual machine hard disk is specified. You can change the hard disk source:

• To use the Boot Camp partition as the virtual machine hard disk, click the Source field, and select the Boot Camp partition name from the list.
• To use a virtual hard disk file as the virtual machine hard disk, click the Source field, and choose the virtual hard disk file from the list, or click Choose an image file, and specify the path to the desired image file (.hdd) on your Mac.

In the Location field, you can specify the type of interface for connecting the device:

• IDE. Using this interface type, you can connect up to four virtual devices (hard disks or CD/DVD drives).
• SCSI. Using this interface type, you can connect up to 15 virtual devices (hard disks or CD/DVD drives).

Note: 1. The Mac OS X guest OS does not support the SCSI controller. In the latest Linux distributions (e.g. RHEL 5.3), the SCSI driver may be not installed. In this case, you should install this driver in your Linux guest OS to be able to use the SCSI controller.

2. The SCSI 7:0 location is not available for selecting, since it is occupied by the SCSI controller itself.

Compressing the Disk

If you use an expanding virtual hard disk in your virtual machine, its image file size on the physical hard disk increases as you add new data to the virtual hard disk. When you delete some data from this virtual hard disk, free unused space appears on the disk, but the amount of space your virtual machine occupies on the hard disk of your Mac does not reduce. To free the unused space back to Mac, click the Compress button. The virtual hard disk will be compressed and the hard disk image file size will be decreased. As a result, there will be more free space on your Mac's hard disk.

Note: The Compress option is available for Windows virtual machines only. Compressing can be performed for virtual machines without snapshots and with the Undo disks option disabled.

On the Optimization pane of Virtual Machine Configuration, you can enable regular automatic disk compression.

Resizing the Disk

If you find that the capacity of your virtual machine's hard disk does not fit your needs anymore, you can change its size. Click the Resize button, and the dialog for changing the disk size will appear.

Note: If your virtual machine is running, has snapshots, or uses a Boot Camp partition as a hard disk, its virtual hard disks cannot be resized.

To change the disk size, drag the slider or type the new size in the Size field. Select the Resize file system option if you want to change the file system size:

• If you select the Resize file system option when increasing the disk size, the additional disk space will be added to the last volume. If you clear the Resize file system option, the added space will appear as unallocated space and will be invisible to the guest operating system. To allocate this space, you will have to either create a new partition or expand an existing partition. For instructions on allocating the added space, see Initializing the Newly Added Space.
• If you select the Resize file system option when decreasing the disk size, the disk will be decreased via removing the unallocated space and decreasing the size of the disk partitions. If you clear the Resize file system option when decreasing the disk size, you will be able to remove the unallocated space of the disk only and the disk partitions will remain untouched.

If you want to prevent Virtual Machine Configuration from further unauthorized changes, click the Lock icon at the bottom of the window. The next time someone wants to change the settings on any pane of Virtual Machine Configuration, an administrator's password will be required.