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 can use either virtual hard disks or Boot Camp partitions or physical disks as their hard disks.

Virtual Hard Disks

The capacity of a virtual hard disk can be set from 100 MB to 2 TB. When you create a virtual machine, the disk is created in the expanding format which means that you can continue installing applications, downloading movies, music, etc. The disk will grow in size proportionally.

Boot Camp Partitions

With Parallels Desktop, you can choose how to use your Boot Camp Windows XP (or later) operating system: to boot in it natively (via Boot Camp) or in a virtual machine (via Parallels Desktop). A Boot Camp Windows partition can be used as a bootable disk or as a data disk in Parallels virtual machines. For detailed information, see Use Boot Camp with Parallels Desktop.

Physical Disks

Parallels Desktop allows you to connect physical disks directly to virtual machines as internal disks. When connected this way, physical disks work faster than via USB. You can either boot virtual machines from such disks or connect them as secondary and work with the disk data.

CD/DVD Discs and Their Images

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

Parallels Desktop has no limitations on using multi-session CD/DVD discs. A virtual machine can play back audio CDs without any limitations on copy-protected discs.

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

Parallels Desktop supports CD/DVD disc images in the ISO, CUE, and CCD formats.

Floppy Disks and Floppy Disk Images

Parallels Desktop 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 having the .fdd extension and connected to the virtual machine.

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