virtualbox.org

Anyone tried using differencing disks?
(a forum search says yes, but perhaps not how i had hoped they would)

Im trying to boot an XP "virtual box".

I have a parent VHD and a child "differencing" disk based on that parent.

I am able to tick the "show differencing disks" box on the "Hard Disks" page, and i can select the disk i want to use.

But when i click OK, the details screen shows the parent is selected, not the child.
and booting the configuration shows that it is indeed the parent thats being booted.

any clues? is it a bug?

Cheers.

The differencing disk feature in VB is like snapshots. The base VDI will still be booted, but the latest changes are in the differencing disk. So if you would save a file to the desktop, that one would be stored in the differencing one. When booting, the base VDI will be read, and at the same time the differencing to make sure the latest file 'version' is used.

hmmm... so you select the base disk, but VB will use the child to boot?
ill give it another go.

If the differencing disk is registered and set as the child of the base VDI, then yes, it will use that differencing disk too.