Virtualbox on an external drive

[Easy55]

I'm in a class for cyber forensics and was just tasked with installing Virtualbox, VirtualCloneDrive, and several ISO's. The instructions were a little vague regarding this portion but the idea was to have several VM spaces on an external drive. I've looked through the forums and can't find anything but I'm tired and have been going at this for hours so excuse me if I overlooked anything.

My laptop has a small C: drive but large D: drive due to a partitioning error last year (there's a gap between them that can't be undone to merge them without paying for software). I installed Virtualbox on the D: drive and two VM's on the external H: drive. When I try to boot the VM's I get this error:

VT-x/AMD-V hardware acceleration is not available on your system. Certain guests (e.g. OS/2 and QNX) require this feature and will fail to boot without it.

If I hit continue:

• Windows 8.1/32 -Windows splash screen to black screen (similar to CLI) to error that says I need to restart my computer.
• Windows 10/32 - black screen to error pop-up window with a memory location that can't be accessed.

Under Machine tools the USB tab says OHCI. I downloaded the extention-pack but when I try to install it, I get an error that says:

The installer failed with exit code 1: VBoxExtPackHelperApp.exe: error: argv[0] does not match the executable image path: 'H:VBoxExtPackHelperApp.exe' != 'H:\VBoxExtPackHelperApp.exe'.

Result Code: E_FAIL (0x80004005)
Component: ExtPackManagerWrap
Interface: IExtPackManager {edba9d10-45d8-b440-1712-46ac0c9bc4c5}

Both the Helper App and the extention-pack are in the same location. H: drive (no folder).

The external drive is a Toshiba 750GB that might be 6 years old at best. It is partitioned into two drives as well.

Any obvious issues or help would be appreciated. FYI - for this class the idea is isolation for simulated analyzation of copied evidence.

Thank you,
Easy55

[Rootman]

No comment on the VB errors.

About the partition issues. Please Google GPARTED, which is a Linux based partition editing software that is completely free. If your laptop is not used for commercial business then Mini Partition Wizard Free is a very good free partition editing software.

[andyp73]

VT-x/AMD-V hardware acceleration is not available on your system. Certain guests (e.g. OS/2 and QNX) require this feature and will fail to boot without it.

Ordinarily, we would need to see a guest log file to get some indication as to why VT-x/AMD-V isn't available. It could be that you have an ancient processor which doesn't support it, in which case you aren't going to get very far with VirtualBox especially the more recent releases as they are making more use of those capabilities and the alternative raw mode is being deprecated. The other option may be that your CPU does have support but something else hijacked it and isn't playing nicely.

The external drive is a Toshiba 750GB that might be 6 years old at best.

Generally speaking putting virtual disk files onto external disk devices isn't a good idea. Something of that age is likely to be USB2.0 and you will find the performance to be unacceptable. You will grow old whilst waiting for the guest to boot.

-Andy.

[Easy55]

Update:

I found a youtube video about the accelorators. The problem is a BIOS setting in the host machine that is set to disable using virtual machines while the host OS is running. I changed the setting to enable virtual operation, rebooted and the result was that the VM allocated for Win8.1 loaded. I could start, begin install of the ISO file, but it did seem somewhat slow. like 38% after 15minutes. I can't remember the last time I loaded an OS so I can't say if that is too slow.
The VM for the Win10 machine on the other hand could not locate the ISO file. The error is something similar to "Failed to attach Toshiba USB 3.0 to virtual machine VirWIN1032".

Andy - Thanks for the comment. The one about CPU not supporting or something hijacked pointed my search to th BIOS setting. Also the Toshiba is a USB3.0 device.

From other posts I've read, I'm I correct in understanding I can run Virtualbox software on the host machine but store the VM files on an external drive AFTER creating them? I think this may be the best option for me in this case.

Thanks Rootman, I will explore those links you mentioned. Every one I've found can merge two partitions only if they adjacent to one another or if they are in different drives and can be "butted" against each other with nothing between them. When My D: drive was created There was some kind of system file created right in front of it that I can't remove without completely restoring the entire system (as far as have been able to deduce.)

[andyp73]

From other posts I've read, I'm I correct in understanding I can run Virtualbox software on the host machine but store the VM files on an external drive AFTER creating them?

You can create the VM on the host machine and then move the VM.

In the thread Having my VMs on a USB key makes them slow socratis posted some representative figures from his test on a macOS host. What took 12 seconds to boot on the internal SSD took 74 seconds on an external USB 3.0 drive.

-Andy.