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Questions tagged [virtual-disk]

A virtual disk is a file accessed as if it was a disk. Virtual Disks are often used with Virtual Machines where they may hold a complete file system for the VM's operating system. An operating may also be able to be booted from a virtual disk (e.g., Microsoft Windows 7 and 8)

56 questions
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How to convert .img to usable VirtualBox format

I have a .img file for Windows 10, and I need to turn it into something which I can use in VirtualBox, such as an ISO, or turning it into a bootable virtual disk for an ICT project.
Anthony
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Copying a VHD to a physical disk

I've seen a lot of guides on how to do physical -> VHD, but is there any way to easily move a VHD image to a physical disk easily? Or should I just attach the disk and go to town with GNU DD?
Ana Betts
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Where is VirtualBox's virtual hard disks repository?

A colleague shared a VirtualBox VM with me. When double clicking the VDI file, VirtualBox opens but I get a few errors (the errors were related to incorrect paths and UUIDs in the VBOX file). So I had to RTFM... I found Importing a VDI in…
jww
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How do I convert a VirtualBox VDI file to a VMware vdmk?

I'm using VirtualBox 2.1.4 and want to convert a VDI file to load it in VMware Player (3.0.0 build-197124 on Vista Home Premium). I think I can change the VDI format to vmdk with a tool provided by VirtualBox: VBoxManage clonehd /vboxdata/old.vdi…
iceman
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Is there any performance difference between the VMDK and VDI virtual disk formats with Virtual Box?

In virtual box 3.0.2 is there any performance difference between using the native VDI virtual disk format and the VMDK virtual disk format?
Sam Saffron
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11
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3 answers

Access raw partition from a virtual machine - is it faster than a virtual disk?

If I allow raw partition access to a virtual machine, will it be considerably faster than a normal, file-based virtual disk? I'm using VirtualBox, Windows 7 and a 5400 rpm HDD, if that matters.
Dercsár
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Fixed size disk vs dynamically allocated: is there a performance difference on an SSD?

When using a virtual disk, I understand that on a HDD there is often a write speed penalty while the drive is still growing. But for an SSD is this penalty mostly eliminated? Is there any other advantage of using a fixed size?
Louis Waweru
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What is a virtual optical disk file and how do you create one?

I am trying to create a virtual machine using virtualBox and I have finished the whole process of specifying the size, the name, etc. However, when I try to power on the machine it tells me: Please select a virtual optical disk file or a physical…
Albert Elling
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6
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1 answer

Internally mark VHD file as read only so that it will never be mounted with write permissions

I am distributing some VHD files that I would like the receiver to be able to mount and view the contents of, however I would like the checksum of the VHD file to remain the same after the receiver mounts it and views its contents. However, by…
Tristan
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How to emulate a virtual USB drive in Windows?

I have a remote server where I should test work of some application with USB drive. Unfortunately, there is no ability to install any USB drive there. So, I need to emulate a virtual USB drive in Windows. Application checks the disks that are on USB…
Ihor Holoviy
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3 answers

How to convert from raw disk image to OVF

How do I convert a virtual appliance image in RAW format (in)directly to OVF/OVA format? There is a tool called ovftools that allows the conversion from .ovf/.ova/.vmx to .ovf/.ova/.vmx. but it doesn't appear to support RAW disk as an input format.…
Eduardo Lago Aguilar
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Windows disk space not increasing with Hyper-V increase

I first created a VM with 10 GB hard disk space but when Windows booted, there was only 69 MB free. Therefore, I created another disk (red-marked in image) but selected "Copy contents from existing disk". This new disk I created of 50 GB space but…
RPK
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Is using 2MB allocation unit size on NTFS a bad idea?

It's for a drive 200GB in size with only virtual machine images. Additional files may include a couple of xml files. The images themselves range from 5GB to 40GB in size. Is 2MB a good idea or a terrible one? Logic dictates that large units mean…
Glitch
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VirtualBox guest not acknowledging expanded drive; Win7 on Win7

I think I'm experiencing a wierd issue; I hope I'm not, and that I'm just somehow missing something consistently. Here's a quick breakdown: Running VirtualBox 4.3.10 Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (SP1) Host OS Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (SP1) Guest OS When I…
Dan Lugg
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Is there a Linux equivalent for VHD from which it can boot?

I have searched for this quite a lot, yet all I could find was VLite. By the way, I'm talking about an equivalent for Windows native VHD boot and not virtualization.
M.U
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