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Support for Virtual and Real Disks

This section lists the types of disks that can be used by Parallels virtual machines and provides the information about basic operations you can perform on these disks.

Supported Types of Hard Disks

Parallels virtual machines use virtual hard disks as their hard disks.

Virtual Hard Disks

The capacity of a virtual hard disk can be set from 100 MB to 2 TB.

Virtual hard disks can be of either plain or expanding format. When you create a virtual machine in Express Windows or Typical mode (in the New Virtual Machine wizard), the disk is created in the expanding format.

plain

A plain virtual hard disk image file has a fixed size. The size is determined when the disk is created. Plain disks can be created with the help of New Virtual Machine wizard (the Custom mode.)

expanding

An expanding virtual hard disk image file is small initially. Its size grows as you add applications and data to the virtual hard disk in the guest OS.

Split disks

A virtual disk of either format can be a single-piece disk or a split disk. A split disk is cut into 2 GB pieces and is stored as a single .hdd file.

CD/DVD Discs and Their Images

Parallels Workstation can access real CD/DVD discs and images of CD/DVD discs.

Parallels Workstation has no limitations on using multisession CD/DVD discs. Virtual machine can play back audio CDs without any limitations on copy-protected discs.

If your host computer has a recordable optical drive, you can use it to burn CD or DVD discs in a virtual machine.

Note: To burn CD or DVD discs in a virtual machine, the recordable optical drive should be connected to the virtual machine in the passthrough mode .

Parallels Workstation supports CD/DVD disc images in the ISO format. Parallels Workstation may also support CD/DVD disc images in the CUE and CCD formats.

Floppy Disks and Floppy Disk Images

Parallels Workstation can use two types of floppy disks:

  • Real diskettes inserted into a real floppy disk drive that is connected to the virtual machine.
  • Floppy disk image files with the .fdd extension connected to the virtual machine.

Parallels Workstation treats floppy disk images like real diskettes. Parallels Workstation supports floppy disk image files that have .fdd extension and 1.44 MB size.

With Parallels Workstation, you can also create an image of a blank floppy using Floppy Disk pane of the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog.

Note: Parallels Workstation cannot create images of real diskettes.

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