Sharing Folders and Disks

A shared folder is a folder on your Mac that can be accessed from your virtual machine. Such folders can be used for exchanging files between the primary OS (Mac OS X) and the virtual machine or between several virtual machines. You can also share the Windows virtual machine disk volumes with Mac OS X - they will be mounted on the Mac OS X Desktop.

In the operating system, where a shared folder resides, it appears as a usual folder, while in the virtual machine, with which it is shared, it appears as a network shared folder.

A shared folder or volume resides on the computer (host computer or a virtual machine) from which it initially belonged. This means a shared folder or volume occupies space on the hard disk of the computer or virtual machine it originally belonged to.

Using shared folders is possible in the guest operating systems with Parallels Tools installed.

Setting up a shared folder requires three steps:

1. Make sure that Parallels Tools are installed in your guest OS. See Installing Parallels Tools for detailed descriptions on how to install Parallels Tools in a particular guest OS.
2. Make sure that the Isolate Mac from Windows (or Isolate Mac from Linux for Linux virtual machines) option is disabled in the Security pane of the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog.
3. Add a shared folder(s) to your virtual machine configuration.

Adding a Shared Folder

1. Start Parallels Desktop and open a virtual machine.
2. Open the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog by doing one of the following:
   • Choose Configure from the Virtual Machine menu; or
   • Click the Configure button on the toolbar of the virtual machine window.
3. In the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog, click the Options tab and select Sharing .
4. In the Sharing pane, click the Edit button. The User-defined Mac folders window will appear.
5. In this window, click the Add button , then choose the folder you want to share with the virtual machine and click Choose .
6. The selected folder will appear in the User-defined Mac folders window.

   

   After you shared a Mac OS X folder with your virtual machine and this folder appeared in the User-defined Mac folders window, you can:

   • Disable this folder sharing by clearing the On option.
   • Change the folder name that will be displayed in your guest OS by double-clicking the folder name in the Name column and specifying another name.
   • See what Mac OS X folder is shared with your virtual machine in the Path column.
   • Restrict writing to this folder by clicking Read & Write in the Permissions folder and choosing Read only .
7. Click OK in the User-defined Mac folders window and then click OK in the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog to save the changes and quit.
8. Now you can start your virtual machine and view the shared folders in the guest OS.

Viewing Shared Folders in Windows Guest OS

1. After you have shared a Mac OS X folder with your Windows virtual machine, start the virtual machine. When the guest OS boots up, you will see the Parallels Shared Folders shortcut on the Windows desktop.
2. Double-click this shortcut. The \\.psf directory will open where all your shared folders are stored.

Note: To be able to save files to a shared folder from inside the virtual machine, make sure this folder writing permissions are not set to Read only .

Viewing Shared Folders in Linux Guest OS

1. After you have shared a Mac OS X folder with your Linux virtual machine, start the virtual machine.
2. Shared folders will be automatically mounted to the / media/psf or /mnt/psf directory upon the virtual machine start.

Sharing Windows Disks to Mac OS

If you want to access your Windows virtual machine volumes from Mac OS X, you can enable inverse sharing. To do this:

1. Start Parallels Desktop and open your Windows virtual machine.
2. Open the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog by doing one of the following:
   • Choose Configure from the Virtual Machine menu; or
   • Click the Configure button on the toolbar of the virtual machine window.
3. In the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog, click the Options tab and select Sharing .
4. Select the Access Windows folders from Mac option to enable access to all virtual disks and partitions available in the virtual machine from your Mac. You will be able to find the virtual machine disks in the virtual machine PVM bundle. Locate the virtual machine bundle in Finder, right-click its name, select Show Package Contents from the context menu, and open the Windows Disks folder.

   Note: By default, virtual machines' bundles are stored in the / Users/<Username>/Documents/Parallels/ folder or in the / Users/Shared folder. To locate the virtual machine bundle, right-click its name in the Parallels Virtual Machines list and select Show in Finder from the context menu.

5. You can also select Mount virtual disks to Mac desktop to mount the shared virtual hard disks to your Mac OS X desktop. After you enable this option, the virtual machine volumes will be accessible from the Mac OS X desktop where they will appear as connected volumes.

   Windows network shares cannot be mounted.

Note: If the virtual machine's volumes are not mounted on Mac OS X desktop, go to Finder > Preferences > General and make sure that the Connected servers option is selected.

For more information about accessing the virtual machine disks from Mac OS, see Browsing Virtual Hard Disks In Finder .