Esschu wrote:
For now, I've set Parallels to NOT back-up via Time Machine and the regular back-ups are much faster (rarely a couple of GBs). So here are the questions I've been asking myself that I haven't been able to find great answers for:
Also, I recommend temporarily turning Time Machine off until you’re all done with the process below. That’s because the VM install places heavy load on your CPU. [ Parallels Desktop 13 for Mac. Backing up a Parallels Virtual Machine on Mac. Backing up the virtual machine. If you use Apple’s own Time Machine, it will try to back up the entire virtual machine every time, taking up a lot of time and a lot of space on backup media. Much better solution to back up a Parallels VM on a Mac. From Bootcamp to Parallels Virtual Machine on a New Mac. By Richard Guay 31 Dec 2015. Difficulty: Beginner. Other than the one on your Mac, at the same time. I figured I could get it up and running on Parallels, but my Mac Mini wasn’t up to it. Parallels desktop pro edition is the best software to run the virtual machine on your Mac machine. The software helps you to run Windows OS on your Mac without any need to have another windows machine, all that you need is a fresh copy of windows.
Are the files that I work with/create in the VM being backed-up even though I've excluded Parallels from the Time Machine back-ups?
No.
I can tell you from experience that you will be better off backing up Parrallels in Time Machine.
It is quiet a shock if you ever have to restore you system from TM and you go to open Parralles and there is nothing there.
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I would suspect some of the files could be present depending on where they have been saved to however.
Mar 1, 2014 8:58 AM
Active7 years, 3 months ago
I use Macbook Air and Lion. I use Time Machine to back up on my Drobo FS. All seems to be ok until I use Parallels. The Time Machine seems to take my virtual machine as one file so every time I open it Time machine wants to back up the WHOLE virtual machine although I maybe have changed only a word in a file. This leads to huge back ups of 20-30 G. Is there anything I can do about this unnecessary backup? Or is there any way I can tell the Time Machine not to back up my Windows files? Can I use tmutil and in that case how?
Camilla
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1 Answer
Parallels have instructions here for making their software (version 6 or later) work better with Time Machine. You can either optimise your VMs for Time Machine backup, or disable backup for them.
Parallels Desktop for Mac includes improved integration with Time Machine. When backing up the virtual machine, it will only backup the recent changes (the latest snapshot), but not the whole virtual hard drive. Thus, the backup process will take less time and use less space on your Time Machine storage device.
To enable improved integration with Time Machine, please go to Virtual Machine Configuration, choose Options and hit Backup.
Select 'Optimize for Time Machine' in SmartGuard menu.
If you do not want your virtual machine to be backed up by Time Machine, you need go to Virtual Machine Configuration --> Options --> Backup and put a checkmark on “Do not back up with Time Machine”.
In Parallels 7 the control panel looks like this:
Note that when you enable this feature, it will take up more space on the disk. Also, Auto Compress will be disabled.
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