Will VMware or Parallels work for a 3TB fusion drive?

Question

Level 1

11 points

Will VMware or Parallels work for a 3TB fusion drive?

I'm in the market for an iMac but I need windows for work-related stuff (and some games)

I have an older macbook pro (13" the first year the 13" went pro, 2009 i think) and I load windows through bootcamp, so no problems there.

I understand that the 3TB fusion drive won't work with bootcamp so my only option seems to be either VMware or Parallels (i haven't used either of these) to load Windows 7.

Just wanted to ask to make sure that there is no limitation with a 3TB fusion drive and VMware or Parallels.

Thanks in advance for any help,

Scott

MacBook Pro

Posted on Jun 14, 2013 10:36 PM

Reply

Answer 1

mende1

Level 10

93,538 points

Jun 14, 2013 10:45 PM in response to scofal

A 3 TB Fusion Drive works with Boot Camp. Mac OS X 10.8.3 included support for 3 TB hard disks, so you can use Boot Camp.

However, it's safer to use a virtual machine that will work without any problem. Note that Parallels, VMware Fusion and VirtualBox use a file as the virtual hard drive for the virtual machine, so you won't have any problem.

For most of users, a virtual machine is sufficient, but Boot Camp will give you a better performance because it uses all hardware

Reply

Answer 2

LowLuster

Level 6

12,105 points

Jun 15, 2013 12:24 AM in response to scofal

There are limitations with either choice you make.

With boot camp, that is where you partition the drive to install windows and have a dual boot system, and a fusion drive windows will be installed on the rotating standard drive only. Not utilizing the ssd flash storage at all.

If you go with a virtual machine install of windows in either parallels, vmware fusion or the free vm program virtualbox from oracle the limitation are in the virtual hardware used. Most specifically in the virtual video card all of the virtual machine program use. So if you are using graphic programs the preformance in a vm will be lower then if windows was in it own partition and using the real hardware in the system. On the plus side for a virtaul machine install of windows is that you can run both os x and windows at the same time, windows and the virtaul machine program might be placed on the ssd part of the fusion drive and will actuall run faster then if it was in its own partition on the standard rotating hard drive.

Reply

Answer 3

Rudegar

Level 10

170,748 points

Jun 15, 2013 2:53 AM in response to scofal

bootcamp require partition changes to the harddisk this caused problems with some version of bootcamp with fusion drives

virtual machines just make a big file on the normal harddisk you could even copy the file to an external harddisk and take it with you can start the virutal machine on another computer both windows and mac (not if it's parallel though because there is no version of that for windows but wmware and virtualbox have clients for windows)

Reply