Time machine backup virtual machines

FWIW, Time Machine backs up everything on your drive unless you exclude something, with the exception of Boot Camp Windows partitions.

I have both VMWare Fusion & VirtualBox along with numerous guests. I have Time Machine back them all up. It's much easier to restore a virtual machine from a back up than create one from scratch if something goes wrong.

I can't speak about Parallels Desktop since i don't use it but VMWare Fusion and VirtualBox do not have an option to exclude VMs from Time Machine. You would have to exclude their folder in Time Machine's preferences.

The default location for your Parallels VMs is ~/Documents/Parallels. Windows, Windows apps and data are are within the VM file.

I back up my Parallel VMs without any issue and it's easy to copy them back if I ever reinstall my Mac OS and the Parallels app. If anything after a reinstall, all I have to do is sign into my Parallels account and the VM is there to use.

FWIW, if you've done nothing to exclude your virtual machine from Time Machine you can use Migration Assistant to move everything over to your new Mac.

FWIW, you never mentioned that was your real question in your OP.

Hello again piratejoe1620,

I double-checked and it is only Parallels that has a setting to exclude virtual disks from Time Machine backups. Apparently, newer versions of Parallels even have an "optimize for Time Machine" setting (see http://kb.parallels.com/en/115052). However, I suggest just excluding any large file like this. Time Machine isn't designed for files like this and there are lots of potential problems.

Just copy your virtual machines to some other drive. When you restore onto your new machine, copy them back. Parallels will be perfectly happy.

Hello piratejoe1620,

It can, if you let it. I suggest you don't. Most VM packages have an option to prevent Time Machine backups.