usb

Running a Windows XP VM in Parallels (Mac) from a USB Flash Drive

Submitted by Jeff Geerling on January 17, 2012 - 5:40pm

I thought I'd post my experience here, for the benefit of others, because I couldn't find a whole lot of information about this specific use of an external USB flash drive.

I have a MacBook Air with a dainty 128GB SSD drive, so I try to keep large files that I rarely use on external drives. I have plenty of external USB and FireWire storage (over 6 TB), and running VMs in either Parallels or VMWare Fusion works great (very highly performant) off any of these external drives.

Trouble Printing in Mac OS X Lion? Reinstall the driver

Submitted by Jeff Geerling on August 9, 2011 - 1:12pm

It always seems to happen after a major OS upgrade—no matter what the operating system... You go to print, and all the sudden you get a warning saying your printer drivers are not up-to-date or are not installed correctly.

In my case, I tried printing to my trusty and reliable Brother HL-2140 (laser printer), and I got a warning that Apple needed to update its drivers via Software Update. I let it try, but that failed. Any time I sent a new print job, the printer dialog simply told me there was an error, and the drivers were out of date.

Using the Plextor PX-B120U Blu-Ray BDROM Drive with a Mac

Submitted by Jeff Geerling on December 2, 2010 - 9:11pm

A few notes from my initial use of the Plextor PX-B120U external USB BD-ROM drive (you can pick it up for under $100!):

  1. You need to plug the drive directly into your Mac, or use a USB hub capable of providing enough juice to power the device directly. Since the Plextor drive doesn't actually have an AC adapter, it needs all its juice through the USB port. (I was trying to plug it into my weak Belkin USB hub, and that wasn't working).
  2. You can use the drive with VMWare Fusion, but it seems you need Windows Vista or Windows 7 to be able to actually do anything besides read DVDs or CDs with the drive.
  3. I don't have Windows 7 (yet), so I can't yet test how well a new iMac can play back Blu-Ray discs using the included CyberLink PowerDVD 9 BD.
  4. I am evaluating MakeMKV (a native BD/DVD ripper for the Mac) to see if it will be able to do what I did for my HD-DVD collection—back everything up in full HD, including the surround sound tracks (I'm okay with Dolby Digital 5.1...)

I'll post back here with any new updates I find.

Subscribe to RSS - usb