virtualbox.org

Hello all,

I am wondering, if I were to create a 2TB virtual drive, how large is this in comparison to physical disk drive space? Thanks for the help guys/gals!

Depends. Dynamic will only use the amount that you have put in it (to start with) and grow accordingly. Fixed will take up the full 2 TB if you have that much free space. Better take a vacation while that is being created, as it will take a very long time.

So, it's basically, one for one when creating a virtual hard drive or does the format matter, VMDK, VHD?

I try to stick to the native format on all Virtualizers. VDI is VirtualBox. VHD is Microsoft and vmdk is VMware.
Seems to have less issues that way.

Ok, but is it one for one with virtualbox?

What do you mean is it one for one?

If I make a 20 gigabyte virtual harddrive, will it take up 20 gigabytes on the physical harddrive?

It will be able to grow to that size if you use dynamic, or it will be that size if you use fixed.
Example you create a dynamic drive of 20GB and install an OS that takes up 5GB of space. You will only have a 5GB file on your host but it can grow to the full 20GB if needed.
There is no compression of that is what you are getting at.

Thank you, that makes sense. Thank you for your help. Every time I googled for this answer, I kept getting how to create a virtual harddreive, and not how large it would be physically.