iMac also running Windows 7 O/S using Parallels

[RideForever]

When I bought the iMac from Byte, all the various documents and Windows driven software that I had on the quickly dying HP desktop that used XP were transferred in and loaded.

It was suggested I use Parallels since I really did not want to try to figure out how to duplicate Excel and WORD files in Numbers and Pages. In fact, I do not think you can for that matter based on what I have done in both of those Apple products. Anyway, that is not the issue.

I did not appreciate at the time but my recollection is that it was said either (a) the document files were loaded on both the iMac operating system portion as well as on the Windows O/S accessible when using MS Excel, WORD, PowerPoint etc via Parallels or (b) the documents were accessible via either operating system. Whichever one of those comments that was used used, I did not quite appreciate the significance since I was having some difficulty conceptualizing two operating systems.

Whenever I opened an existing document using one of the MS softwares (pretty much always Excel or WORD, I would search from that software going into Home on ‘Mac’ (Z). If I created a new document, it was saved again in a subdirectory on Home on ‘Mac’(Z). My understanding/assumption was that whether opened/saved or created/saved, it was the same document for both operating systems.

Being into photography and shooting RAW, I started last year seeing popups indicating disk full when I had the Windows O/S open so I started to purge some files. Eventually, I just bought multi-TB external hard drives and moved well over 90% of all photos off the hard drive. However, the problem still persisted and investigating, I realized that when doing a side by side comparison of documents on Home on ‘Mac’(Z) (using Mac’s Finder) vs Local Disk(C (using Windows Explorer), none of the new documents created or updated documents or deleted documents on (Z) were on (C. I then spent a considerable amount of time deleting on (C and got back many GB of space. However, I eventually still continued to get the disk full popup and so I looked at software that had been loaded and got rid of stuff that either duplicated because it could run via Mac or just not used. Got back some space again. There was a sub-directory in C: named Favourites (the links to web sites) and these too were deleted without impacting the ability to use Favourites on the Mac side.

It has happened again (see attached 2 screenshots).

Yesterday, there was a Parallels update and there were two popups (see attached) which seemed to be driven by insufficient memory.

Something is chewing up memory. I need advice from one who is familiar with iMac also running Windows 7 O/S using Parallels on what to do or does it need a hands on look by a professional shop that also knows Parallels?

Thoughts would be welcomed.

 

[DaveWT]

I suggest you talk to Aitan on the topic of Parallels. He did an excellent overview of the capabilities and benefits of Parallels at the recent Sidney SIG and is very enthusiastic about it.

Perhaps catch him at the next general meeting in June and ask him about your situation.

 

[RideForever]

Thanks for that DaveWT

 

[chas_m]

It was suggested I use Parallels since I really did not want to try to figure out how to duplicate Excel and WORD files in Numbers and Pages.

That was probably poor advice. There's no need to "duplicate" or re-create Excel and Word files, or use Windows at all for that: in addition to Office for Mac being available, Numbers and Pages can open Excel and Word files directly. Depending on the complexity of the document, they open exactly as they would in Office, with possibly a font substitution if you used something other than the standard Office fonts.

Something is chewing up memory. I need advice from one who is familiar with iMac also running Windows 7 O/S using Parallels on what to do or does it need a hands on look by a professional shop that also knows Parallels?

The advice to consult Aitan is a very good suggestion, but it seems to me the screenshots tell the tale -- you have only allocated about 200GB of space for your Windows drive (C, so of course it is constantly filling up. You should allow Parallels to re-size itself as needed, since you have plenty of free space on your drive. Aitan can advise you on how to proceed with that if you don't already know how, but again ... from your description, there is zero need to be eating up valuable storage space with Windows at all, or running two operating systems (unless there is something not mentioned that is only available for the Windows platform).

 

[RideForever]

Thanks to all for input and advice. However, I chose to go straight to Parallels support. The first techie found that Windows Recycle Bin and Mac's Trash were linked in Settings and thought that, despite me emptying Trash quite frequently, deleting what was in the Recycle Bin would solve the problem. I did not pick up the amount that was in Recycle but suffice to say it was double digits in GB; however, when looking at the change in memory afterwards, the amount was less than a GB so that was not the answer. He ran a bunch of other tests that also made no appreciable change. After checking a few more settings and downloading and sending to themselves a bunch of technical data, the problem was escalated to the Parallels Development team. A 3rd session with support just finished who in the end downloaded WinDirStat, a free and open-sourced graphical disk usage analyzer for MS Windows and through which the problem was found - TEMPORARY FILES. When he started there was 1.64GB free of 181GB allocated to the C:\ drive - now there is 134GB free after using WinDirStat to delete Temp and Log files.

Charles/Aitan, maybe a session about this analyzer might be of interest.

 

[chas_m]

For future reference: "memory" refers to RAM, not storage. Those files were eating up your available storage, not filling up your RAM. In any event, glad that Parallels was able to find and fix the issue, but I'm concerned that the program wasn't self-deleting the temporary files.

Also, further to my previous post -- Microsoft of course sells Office for the Mac both as a standalone and as a subscription, so again ... no need to eat up valuable hard drive space installing an entire second operating system, programs, et al when your Mac will do the job more or less out of the box.