w10 sees the external drive but no files on the drive. A Parallels or a W10 issue?

Hi,

I run W10 under Parallels 12. MAC OS 10.12.6. When I open Explorer under "This PC" and also as a stand alone line under the left column I see the external drive. But on the right column there are no files at all ("The folder is empty"). Yet, there are many W10 files there, that I can see if I shut down Parallels so the drive will then appear in the MAC Finder. Furthermore, when I try to copy a folder from the W10 Desktop to the external drive I get a message that the folder to be copied cannot be found. But it is right there on the W10 Desktop and it easily opens when double clicked. I've uploaded a screen shot of the Explorer window.

Is this some weird W10 issue or does it have to do with Parallels?

Thank you for your help and suggestions.

 

Hello Mark F, please check whether Shared Profile is fully enabled and see if that helps.

 

Hi Meena, thank you for your reply but I do not see the answer in #6912. Under Tools\Options\Sharing the current setting is "Share Folders: All disks".

This is a situation where W10 sees the disk but not the folders on the disk.

 

Are you able to see the files that are in the external drive on Mac side? Please let us know the format of the external hard drive?

 

Hi Meena,

If I shut down Parallels I can then see the external drive and its contents on the Mac side. If Parallels is running I do not see this external drive on the Mac side. I do not recall the format. How can I tell?

Thanks.
Mark

 

Please shut down Windows and quit Parallels Desktop completely. Once the external drive appears on the Mac side, right-click on it, select 'Get Info' from the menu that appears and check for the information given for 'Format:' in the window that appears. Let us know the same.

 

Hi, the format is MS DOS (Fat 32). Thanks.

 

Hi @Mark F , are the files accessible from the Mac side?

 

Hi Arun,

With Parallels shut down the external disk appears in the Mac finder. Whn I click on that drive a list of files appears but I cannot open them on the Mac side. An error message appears stating: "There is no application set to open the document_________________". I guess that is because these are Windows files.

Thanks.

 

Hi again,

Can anyone help with this issue? I really do not know what to do.

Thanks.

Mark

 

We suggest you, to take a backup of the external hard disk and format to EX-FAT and then check if this works. Thanks!