[X4U] Parallels vs. Boot Camp: Might disk Defrag help?

[Jim Robertson]

A week or so ago I asked for some real-world reports on the user experience
of Parallels, because my only exposure to it was mousing around on an Intel
iMac (the one with the biggest screen; I forgot to check its RAM and its
processor clockspeed) at my local Apple Store. I was surprised that it
stuttered simply dragging an icon across the Windows desktop (within a
window on the Mac Desktop; I forgot to see if things would be any different
in full screen mode).

Yesterday on Macintouch, Stephen DeNagy suggested a possible explanation.
Here it is:

> I have noted the slow-down of Parallels as well. My MBP has been tight with
> Hard Disk space. When iDefrag was finally brought up to speed, I was aalled to
> see that the Parallels virtual disk was fragmented to something like 80 to
> 100,000 fragments (all over the disk!). I know UNIX is supposed to have
> obviated this as a problem, but I think there has to be a hit when using a
> virtual machine fragmenting itself on a host which is fragmenting on the disk!
> So...I cleaned up, threw out and used iDefrag to do a total defrag. There has
> been an impressive improvement in performance since then. We really do need
> quite a bit of consistently open HD space for Parallels to perform at its best

Most of the Mac lists I read have visited the defrag/don't defrag debate
many times. This one user's experience certainly sounds convincing, but
before I drop $30 on something that will tie up my machine for several
hours, I'm  curious what those more technically savvy than I would say about
this. Ideally, I'd guess that some revision of Parallels that permits it to
USE the Windows OS installed on a partition created by Boot Camp might be
the best solution to this, but I've only heard well-placed rumors about that
happening...

Thanks so much,

Jim Robertson
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