APFS discovery (maybe) and issues with Parallels Bootcamp

[jsawy3r]

After updating to APFS on HS I received the following error when trying to use Bootcamp through Parallels 12 "Unable to connect to Hard Disk 0" (normal Bootcamp still works fine). I tired remaking the VM with no luck.

After doing some digging in diskutil I discovered my Macintosh HD partition is now a "synthesized" partition with sub-partions (check the attached image). I can't recall my disk ever being like this 10.12 and below... but I also didn't try and memorize it. Seemed like an interesting find in itself.

My guess is that Parallels isn't able to find disk0s4 because of this new system, but I'm guessing AND not sure if something else is at work. Figured it'd be best to throw this out and see if anybody has some thoughts.

I've seen that Parallels is working for others, but I'm not sure if they're running the VM off of a file in macOS (as I suspect) or Bootcamp.

Trying to get a sense of:
1) during the update to HS did my disk got updated oddly? Are others seeing this format? (run "sudo diskutil list" in terminal)
2) Is this something others have run into?
3) Is this something that just needs Parallels to address in an update?

Appreciate the thoughts!

 

[casperes1996]

Because of the way APFS works, it is normal for your disk to be "synthesised". APFS works with a container structure, where an APFS container envelopes all (or in some cases parts) of the disk, and all your partitions are nested within the container. This is why Disk Utility may refers to partitions as synthesised. The APFS container, should it not span the whole drive (not sure how this is set up if it does) becomes a container on the main drive, instead of a normal partition. Then that container is, as far as the kernel is concerned, treated as a separate disk that is then the APFS partitions/volumes.

I think Parallels needs an update. I don't know exactly how Parallels accesses the Bootcamp data so I don't know if a workaround is possible, or exactly why it's having issues, since the Bootcamp partition shouldn't be affected. Though it could be because your root is now within the container, i.e. disk 1, and you BC partition is on disk 0, and they are physically the same but in kernel space different... Do you know if the problem occurs on HS systems that are not converted to APFS? Just to rule out the possibility that it could be unrelated to the change of file system. Is the BC partition mounted and accessible on your system by Finder?