The notable exception to this is a Windows Update. The actual amount of space that the virtual hard drive occupies on your Mac main storage grows as you install Windows apps and Windows documents, and in many cases, shrinks as you delete apps or documents. – Actual size increases or decreases, as needed – Maximum size can be increased or decreased Local Disk (C:) (in Windows) ( VM name)-0.hdd (on Mac) Table 1 lists some of the characteristics of these two kinds of storage.
On a Parallels Desktop VM, the main storage is a file on your Mac where Windows, Windows apps, and your Windows documents (in some cases) are stored. On a Mac, the “Macintosh HD” is the main storage. In this blog post, I will outline some of the differentiators between a hard drive and a virtual hard drive, and explain how the new feature, “Automatically Reclaim Disk Space”, assists in reducing wasted space on your Mac hard drive or SSD. In some ways, it’s better – after all, can you drag & drop a file from your Mac to a PC? Nope! In other ways, it’s just different, and the virtual hard drive component of a Parallels Desktop virtual machine (VM) is one of those differences. Parallels Desktop® is like having a Windows PC inside your Mac. This post is part of a series about new features in Parallels Desktop 16.
