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"Portable Hard Disk Images"

Posted: 13. Nov 2009, 09:53
by harisund
I have a workstation at work, a desktop at home and a laptop. They are all similar machines, for the most part, and all of them are 32 bit Windows XP hosts. I have installed the latest version of VirtualBox on all of them.

On my home desktop, I create a new virtual machine, Ubuntu 32 bit guest. Installation works fine etc, and the virtual machine file is on my external hard disk.

When I go to my office, is there anyway I can plug my external hard disk into my workstation there and have VirtualBox identify it seamlessly? Can I have XML file listing all my virtual OSes in the external hard disk too?

Basically I want everything contained in my external hard disk, and my guest should run the same irrespective on which installation of VirtualBox I run it on.

Any suggestions to achieve the same?

Re: "Portable Hard Disk Images"

Posted: 13. Nov 2009, 11:52
by Technologov
Please Change topic from "Portable VirtualBox" --> "Portable Hard Disk Images". Portable VirtualBox is a different (unofficial) product.

I know a dirty way. This will work, but will give warnings.

Create a VM on each of your host PCs VirtualBoxes.
Attach to your VM your VDI (register virtual HDD on each of your Hosts), that is placed on the USB Disk.

I dunno of a better solution, except wrapping up some (python?) script, that will unregister and re-register VDIs every time you plug-in your USB Disk. This may resolve the warnings.

-Technologov

Re: "Portable Hard Disk Images"

Posted: 13. Nov 2009, 18:42
by harisund
Thank you. I will try that out.

So there's no "official" way to do this then?

Re: "Portable Hard Disk Images"

Posted: 13. Nov 2009, 19:01
by Technologov
Nope.

But you can develop your own way, and let us know... (For example, I was able to run Seamless mode in VBox v1.3, way before it was officially available in v1.5)