Hello,
Is there any kind of portable version of VirtualBox, working in both windows and linux?
VirtualBox portable
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mpack
- Site Moderator
- Posts: 39134
- Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
- Primary OS: MS Windows 10
- VBox Version: VirtualBox+Oracle ExtPack
- Guest OSses: Mostly XP
Re: VirtualBox portable
Define what "portable" means to you?
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dkorzhevin
- Posts: 2
- Joined: 11. Oct 2012, 14:39
Re: VirtualBox portable
I need to install VirtualBox to usb flash drive formatted to HFS+ file system in Mac Book.
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mpack
- Site Moderator
- Posts: 39134
- Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
- Primary OS: MS Windows 10
- VBox Version: VirtualBox+Oracle ExtPack
- Guest OSses: Mostly XP
Re: VirtualBox portable
If you mean that VirtualBox launches automatically from a portable drive, without needing to be installed - then no, no such feature exists in the official version of VirtualBox. There is an unofficial fork of VirtualBox around called "Virtualbox-Portable", but I know little about that version, and in any case unofficial forks are not supported here.
In addition, I don't see how you can expect (say) a Windows host to launch VirtualBox - or anything else - from a portable drive formatted with a filesystem which Windows doesn't support. The drive would have to be formatted using a more widely recognized filesystem. FAT32 is deeply rooted, but of course a VM would have to use VMDK "split2g" to avoid the 4GB filesize constraint. I'm not aware of any other hdd filesystem that is widely accepted and doesn't have that limitation - the nearest would be NTFS... a tricky choice because the spec for Linux and Mac has been reverse engineered (not published), and evidently was not really designed for removable drives anyway.
In addition, I don't see how you can expect (say) a Windows host to launch VirtualBox - or anything else - from a portable drive formatted with a filesystem which Windows doesn't support. The drive would have to be formatted using a more widely recognized filesystem. FAT32 is deeply rooted, but of course a VM would have to use VMDK "split2g" to avoid the 4GB filesize constraint. I'm not aware of any other hdd filesystem that is widely accepted and doesn't have that limitation - the nearest would be NTFS... a tricky choice because the spec for Linux and Mac has been reverse engineered (not published), and evidently was not really designed for removable drives anyway.