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Kimbro Staken exploring creative use of technology and whatever else happens to seem interesting.
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Parallels complaining about the geometry of a hard disk
If you ever try to add a new hard drive to a Parallels virtual machine and you get the following error.
Unable to get the geometry of the virtual hard disk. Perhaps file os.hdd is not a valid virtual hard disk image file.
The first thing you should check is the file permissions. If the file is set to be read only this is the error that Parallels will give you. It’s confusing and not obvious at all what the real issue is in that case.
Last month I spent two days studying disk geometry trying to figure out why my images weren’t working when it was just a simple permissions problem. I reported this, so hopefully a future version of parallels will include a less confusing message for such a simple problem.
This entry was posted by Kimbro Staken on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 at 7:13 pm and is filed under Virtualization. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.
March 28th, 2007 at 7:31 am
Hmm. I’m getting a similar error, but permissions seem to be set properly. It just stopped working suddenly. I’ll let you know if I figure anything else out.
March 30th, 2007 at 3:05 am
you just saved me half a day. thanks, kimbro!
April 1st, 2007 at 12:51 am
I am having the same problem. But the folder permissions are OK. In my case it seems to be the fact that the .hdd files are located on an Airport Disk, as they are working fine when the HD is connected directly to the host PC.