Step 2: Understanding the files that make up your Parallels VM

Remember, this is coming not from an engineer at Parallels, just a techie that spent way too much time trying to understand all of this.

This is all based on Parallels 5 and I believe it's all quite similar for Version 4

Let's say you have a Windows 7 VM and it's located in your Documents/Parallels/Windows 7.pvm folder.

Within this folder you'll find:

config.pvs - contains the settings for your virtual machine.  XML format that you can view in a text editor, most of the things you change through the VM settings are stored in this file.   If you're curious, go ahead and open it to see what's in there.

floppy.fdd - emulated store for floppy drives

parallels.log - log file for viewing what's going on in Parallels.  If you're experiencing errors, you might find a clue in here as to what's going wrong.

Snapshots folder - Contains memory images (.mem files), Screen shot at the time of capture (.png files), Configuration file (.pvc files, which you can view with TextEdit) and .sav files (contains state of open apps, etc at snapshot time, though I don't know all of the details exactly.)

For each snapshot, there will be four files, each named with the GUID (globally unique ID) of the snapshot.

Snapshots.xml - Ties together the order of the snapshots and is used in conjunction with the Parallels snapshot manager.  (One of the most unreliable parts of Parallels in my opinion)

unattended.fdd - emulated store for unattended installs from what I've read, I honestly didn't care as I don't think it had anything to do with repairing a broken VM.   I may be wrong though.

.hdd - Container for images that represent your Parallels virtual machine hard disk.  Right click and use "Show Package Contents" to see what's in there.  (I'll detail the files below)

.hdd.drh