Using Parallels Compressor

Parallels Compressor is an easy-to-use Parallels utility which will help you keep your virtual machines efficient for many purposes.

Parallels Compressor is a part of the Parallels Tools set and is installed, updated, and removed with Parallels Tools. To start Parallels Compressor, choose Run Parallels Compressor from the Virtual Machine menu.

Note: Parallels Compressor is not available for the virtual machines that use the Boot Camp partition. The Run Parallels Compressor menu command is disabled.

Parallels Compressor allows users to:

• effectively clean up disk space in a virtual machine
• significantly reduce the size of virtual hard disks files
• efficiently use the resources of a physical hard disk

Note: Compressing of a virtual machine cannot be performed if the virtual machine has the Undo disks option enabled, or if it has snapshots. Compressing is also unavailable for the virtual machines with plain disks.

If, nevertheless, you want to compress the virtual machine that has snapshots, delete all the snapshots with the help of Snapshot Manager before you start compressing the virtual machine's disks. For more information, refer to Managing Snapshots.

To compress the virtual machine with Undo Disks, first disable the Undo disks feature in Virtual Machine Configuration.

For detailed information on using Parallels Compressor, refer to Parallels Compressor User's Guide.

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