virtualbox.org

Ok so here's my setup - (I noticed there was a similar post just a few posts down, but mine has a few differences)

So I have the latest VirtualBox installed on both my home workstation and campus workstation. Both hosts are running Windows 7, my guests are among the latest versions of Ubuntu, Fedora and Mint. Both hosts have 3GB of memory, all guests are assigned 1GB of memory. The graphics card and CPU type in the hosts vary, though all are atleast dual core (and I am pretty sure none of them support hardware virtualization). I take an external portable USB hard disk between work and home. The machines all have 2GB of synced Dropbox on them.

Here's what I want to do. I want to be able to create virtual hard disks in my external hard disk, so that I can continue from home or work from where I left off at the other place. I want my snapshots to be available too, as I plan on storing my snap shots in the external hard disk too.

I understand at the stage where I am asked about hard disk to use, I can use an existing hard disk instead of creating one and attaching the one in the external hard disk. Is there any other solution to it? Should I create a virtual machine, export settings and then import it in the other machine. Can I have the meta data also stored in the external harddisk, or perhaps on Dropbox so they get synced across the machines?

I would've helped a lot more if you updated your profile to include information about Host and guests (host especially). Saves ploughing through your post trying to figure out what host you have. Posting in the right section can also help a lot.

Now for the solution: set the variable VBOX_USER_HOME to point to the external hard drive. All settings, VMs, snapshots and whatnot that is part of the VM tree will be saved on that location. You have to make sure that the different computers use the same drive letter for the external hard drive. Other than that, it should be smooth sailing. Just don't save-state a VM and resume it on another Host, it will not work due to CPU ID changes.

Thanks!

And sorry, didn't realize the profile has those vital information. I will have it updated henceforth.