User`s guide

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Advanced Topics
Save Snapshots of a Virtual Machine
A snapshot is a saved state of the guest OS. It's useful to create snapshots, for example, before:
• you're going to run some programs that may damage the guest OS; or
• if you're going to configure some guest OS software that requires a lot of settings; or
• if you want to mark milestones in the development process.
Note: 1. Snapshots cannot be created for Windows virtual machines that use the Boot Camp partition.
2. If your virtual machine has one or more snapshots, you can neither compress nor resize the virtual
hard disk.
If something goes wrong, you can revert the changes back to any of your snapshots and continue
working with the guest OS.
Create a Snapshot
1 Start Parallels Desktop.
2 In the Parallels Virtual Machines list, select the virtual machine for which you want to create a
snapshot.
3 Click Virtual Machine > Manage Snapshots.
4 Click New, specify the snapshot name and click OK.
Automate the Creation of Snapshots
The SmartGuard functionality allows you to automate snapshots creation.
Note: SmartGuard is available only when the Undo Disks feature is disabled and the virtual machine is
not running in Safe Mode.
To access settings for automating snapshots:
1 Start Parallels Desktop.
2 In the Parallels Virtual Machines list, select the virtual machine for which you want to create a
snapshot.
3 Click Virtual Machine > Configure.
4 Click Options > Backup.