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Using VirtualBox on external drive

Posted: 17. Mar 2013, 11:13
by getphuture
Good day all,

I'm using virtual box to do mostly windows internet explorer testing ( from 6 to 10 ) and other browsers on a macbook pro.
All virtual machines were around 120Gb on a standard 500Gb. I've just got a new hard drive 256GB SSD.
So what is the solutions to run properly Virtual Box ? Keep it as it is ? Put everything on an external hard drive ?
Any help, feedbacks, resources, comments would be greatly appreciated. Thank youuuuuu

Re: Using VirtualBox on external drive

Posted: 17. Mar 2013, 17:23
by Rootman
USB is pretty slow so your guest will not be that fast but it WILL work, USB 3, Firewire or eSATA would be far better. I have all my guests on an external eSATA drive on my work PC, it's just another HDD. With this you may run into Windows activation issues if you switch the guest from one Host PC to another.

I am wondering, WHY 120GB for a guest? Most Windows guests I run are fewer than 20GB and the actual VDI file can be smaller than that (at least initially) if you use thin provisioning. Simple math with your selected guest drive size means you'll have to have at least 600GB of room. Going from version 6 and 7 of IE means you'll have to be using 2 Windows XP guests, IE 8 can be Win 7 or XP and 9 and 10 must be Win 7 or Win 8. And while I've not tried it Google on "portable IE", I've seen reference of them but don't know a thing about 'em, and YES they're unofficial too :)

Re: Using VirtualBox on external drive

Posted: 17. Mar 2013, 18:56
by ChipMcK
getphuture wrote:Put everything on an external hard drive ?
check out http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sclient=ps ... 20&bih=889