Parallels – Pausing

Yes, I know…another post on Parallels. It’s just that I keep finding new and cool features within Parallels, and I’ve just got to share them!

This time I found something that really helps out when you’re using something like a external USB hard drive or a flash key. It’s called Pause and basically it does exactly what it says. First off I’ll let you know why this is helpful when using a USB hard drive or flash key. For some reason when you’re running Parallels and you plug one of these devices in, it’ll only show up in the Guest OS (Windows XP, Linux…etc). My remedy for this before I found Pause was to shut down or Suspend the Guest OS so that it mounted in OS X. It worked, but after finding this Pause ability, I won’t use those methods anymore.

Pausing essentially haults the Guest OS right where it is. It just freezes it. Think of hitting Pause instead of the off button on your home DVD player. If you hit Pause, then you can just hit play and it’ll start right back up from where you left off without having to start everything back up.

This allowed the USB flash key I was using to show up in OS X, and then I could Un-Pause Windows XP and continue working!

It’s really a great feature, one of tons that comes in Parallels.