installation requirements on a MacBook?

[jeanaj]

Hi all--I am looking into using Virtualbox on my MacBook (running OS X, so as far as I know it should work) in order to install Windows for a job. However, I can't find any information about how much of my harddrive I need to free up or allocate for this program to work... 5 gigs? 10? more? less?

thanks
jeana

[Perryg]

Well this is your lucky day. You do not need to clear off anything unless your drive is full. VBox will set advise what ever you tell it to use for the guest. It will make a suggestion for you but you can increase it to what ever size you need. You can also use dynamic sizing and then tell it the top figure you want to allow it to grow to. Just remember when you set this size if you try to go over you will need to go through several hoops to make it bigger. A little reading here VitrualBox will bring things to light for you. But for your hard drive and Windows I would set aside at least 10 Gig and even up to 30 Gig if I were doing it. Remember this is the max it probably will not be anywhere near that size.

[jeanaj]

Hi Perry--thanks for the advice! The problem is, I think I only have 13 gigs free right now, so I'd have to do some clearing if I wanted optimal space. The other thing is, I recently had a Mac expert look at my computer because I was anticipating having to install Virtualbox or something like it, and he said it may not function too well until I did some "cleaning up" around my harddrive. So I'm hesitant to run Virtualbox until this "cleaning up" has happened, making me think that perhaps I should delay this installation until I can take the time to have someone help me out with it...

[Perryg]

That's sound thinking. But if you need it for work you better get hopping my friend.

Depending on the version of Windows you could get by with 10 Gig but running your hard drive full will slow down the machine. So now you have incentive. Once you have installed VBox and figured out how to use it you will be hooked. Everyone I have installed this for has been happier than when they got their computer new.

[jeanaj]

Thanks for the advice, Perry. One more question: does VBox actually partition my harddrive? There was the possibility earlier of using another program to do a similar thing (I think it was Bootcamp?) in order to get Windows on my Mac, but my laptop's harddrive wouldn't let itself be so easily partitioned, hence having to take it into the Mac shop to have my harddrive cleaned up a bit. If VBox doesn't actually need to partition my harddrive, then I can just delete the old files cluttering up my disk space, and be ready to install VBox... if it does need to partition my harddrive, then I guess I'm stuck taking my computer into the shop no matter what, lol...

thanks
jeana

[dmcgraw]

Jeana,

No, VirtualBox does not need to create a new partition on your hard disk like BootCamp does. VB will store the guest's virtual drive (VDI) just as a file on your hard drive.

Dave