User`s guide

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Advanced Topics
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 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.
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.
When you create a virtual machine, the disk is created in the expanding format. You can change
the disk format in the Hard Disk pane of the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog. To add a plain
hard disk to your virtual machine, clear the Expanding disk option when adding a hard disk to the
virtual machine.
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.
Boot Camp Partitions
With Parallels Desktop, you can choose how to use your Boot Camp Windows XP, Windows Vista,
or Windows 7 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 Using the Boot Camp Partition in
a Virtual Machine.
Note: You cannot create snapshots or use the Undo Disks option for a virtual machine that uses the
Boot Camp partition.
CD/DVD Discs and Their Images