Mac – Will Parallels be safe while upgrading to El Capitan

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The new update seems pretty legit, so I am considering updating my macbook.

I have Parallels installed on my computer, and I don't want it to be removed or damaged during the installation of El Capitan.

If I use time machine to back up my macbook, will it back up everything and keep Parallels and the files on it safe? Or, will it only store original Mac files, ignoring parallels?

Best Answer

Parallels has said that "Parallels Desktop 10 for Mac will run on OS X El Capitan (10.11) as long as you are on the latest update" and directs customers to this KB to ensure you are up to date on v10:

http://kb.parallels.com/111603

They recommend upgrading to Parallels 11 which is optimized for El Capitan. Some things that are broken in 10 are:

You will NOT be able to drag and drop files from Windows to Mac or use Windows Applications in full screen

So, you won't lose any files and you'll just want to be sure you're up to date with 10 according to that KB before making the jump.

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MacOS – Cannot restore located file from TimeMachine

When you find the file in Time Machine, you can right-click it and select "Restore xyz to ..." . That lets you choose a destination folder.

MacOS – Time Machine ridiculously slow after El Capitan upgrade

Part of the issue is that low priority input/output-operations (I/O) now seems to get throttled heavily. You can check it via Terminal (can be found via Spotlight (usually bound to ⌘Space) and entering terminal) then entering at the bash prompt:

fs_usage backupd

and look for the THROTTLED entries. If you see them, the backup is throttled.

So if you have a ton of files, just the time it takes to do the I/O takes forever, even if the files are small (because it performs a bunch more I/O operations around xattrs etc. than it used to).

Go to a Terminal and enter:

sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0

For me, this speed it up from 72 hours to ~4 hours on an filesystem with 2.5 million files.

It's also a good idea to re-enable the throttling after your backup finished successfully with the following command

sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=1

Best Answer

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MacOS – Cannot restore located file from TimeMachine

MacOS – Time Machine ridiculously slow after El Capitan upgrade

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