On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 5:08 AM, dorayme <dora...@optusnet.com.au> wrote: > 3. Shall I partition the 320GB HD for a planned purchase and installation of > Fusion or Parallels *at this stage* or not worry about it?
I believe that both Fusion and Parallels for the Mac support a "virtual disk" mechanism. Certainly you can also carve out a separate partition on your hard drive for the OS which you wish wish to run in parallel to OS X. But you don't need to. The virtual disk boils down to the app creating a file which resides in your Mac's Extended (aka HFS+) File System. This file would be at least a few GB in size and contains the complete installation of the OS which you are running under Fusion or Parallels. The advantage is that the size of this virtual disk/partition can be (relatively) easily dynamically expanded so you don't have to "waste" space on a fixed partition. You can also back it up as part of backing up the other files on your Mac should you choose to. I suppose the disadvantage is that you are more locked into depending on the virtualization app to run the OS in the virtual drive. You couldn't (for example) easily clone/copy the install partition to another (non-Mac) system and run it there. This has never been a concern for me. -irrational john -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
