Reasoning

I've been booting back and forth to use some Windows apps. I was going to just use Parallels and create a Windows VM but I already have an actual working Windows drive in my system which is mainly for gaming. Another 40GB for a VM seemed redundant and a waste of precious SSD space. So I started to do some research, most articles were really old but people succeeded in the past.

 

Easiness

After some research and testing it is fairly easy. If you have Windows installed properly on a separate drive by itself with correct partitioning it's automatic. When selecting boot camp in Parallels it automatically finds your Windows drive from your dual boot setup and sets it up just like it would if it was a real boot camp drive. Now your not wasting space and changes made in Parallels will translate to when you boot into into Windows. Absolutely glorious.

 

Limitations

  • It can't be paused.
  • It can't be saved as a snapshot.
  • It can't run in Safe Mode.
  • It can't be compressed.

 

My necessary adjustments

I am not sure how it would work if your dual booting from the same drive. This is what I did and I have 2 separate drives for OSX and Windows but my Windows drive had 8.1 and 10 on it. This caused some issues. I played around with it for quite some time but Parallels couldn't pick it up. For some reason it couldn't find my drive. My guess is because it was a dual boot EFI. I ended up removing 10, deleting and restoring my EFI partition with these instructions. Whenever dealing with Windows installers always disconnect or disable your Mac drive b/c Windows will try to overwrite any boot drives it sees. After enabling my Mac drive, giving it boot priority, and then booting with clover, Parallels did it's magic and I was up and running in a couple minutes.

 

Edited: Formatting.

submitted by blazinsmokey
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