Parallels update and creating VM images from direct disk images

Parallels build 1966

This is now a very old build, check out the Parallels Desktop product page for the latest official release.

Parallels have put ‘internal build 1966’ of their excellent Mac virtual machine (VM) software Parallel Desktop up in their forums.

New enhancements and bug fixes include shared networking, OS installation assistant and various minor other fixes.

Seems solid so far (24 hours).

Creating a virtual disk from a real one

Parallels doesn’t support direct access to disk partitions but instead relies on it’s own virtual hard-disk-in-a-file system much like other VM solutions.

VMware have made available a Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) tool, currently free and in beta, that works only on Windows but can ‘hot clone’ systems in use. It supports a number of virtual formats including Virtual PC and Ghost but not Parallels.

Until either Parallels or VMware fill in the missing pieces check out colddiver’s solution on the forums.

[)amien