support for physical eSATA port?

[mrdp]

My laptop does not have USB 3.0 ports. I would like to employ the eSATA port to take advantage of faster data transfer than USB 2.0 offers. The Oracle VM VirtualBox User Manual includes no mention of physical eSATA support. I can only find USB and serial ports. Does VirtualBox support data transfers via a physical eSATA port on the host machine? If so, please point me to the appropriate documentation for details.

Thanks,
mrdp

[noteirak]

AFAIK eSATA is just another "front-end" (or "back-end") for a SATA port. So there would be no different seeing a SATA port from a eSATA one.
What are you trying to achieve here exactly?

[mpack]

The VirtualBox user manual does not discuss the bus technology behind any of the hosts disk drives, because it doesn't mind which drives you locate VMs on. However using any kind of removable drive does involve certain risks.

[mrdp]

Thanks for the replies.

What are you trying to achieve here exactly?

I am seriously considering an attempt to run a virtual network from an external drive as described here for an single OS: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/27 ... drive.html. The build will be incremental (one OS at a time), with the end goal being a functional network running inside a VM. (one server with two clients)

In anticipation of the question "why?' I will answer that now. My laptop will support running the VMs, but the current budget does not allow the expense of building a custom machine with better hardware support for more full featured use of the virtual network. (more processors, more memory, multiple monitors) If my understanding is correct, I can preserve preserve my activation of each OS, rather than requiring the purchase of new product keys when migrating to the custom machine. As a bonus if I can successfully run the OSes from an eSATA external drive, the increased data transfer rate will be very welcome. In the interim I can spend time building and testing the network at no additional expense to me.

However using any kind of removable drive does involve certain risks.

This is an independent project with no concerns for losing vital business critical data. The intent is to tinker with various aspects of networking and observe the changes in operation and learn troubleshooting in a safe environment. Please correct me if I am wrong. If my understanding is correct, I can copy the VirtualBox folders to another storage medium for the purpose of restoring to any state from initial installation to the latest test configurations. In the event of a critical failure, recovery is just a few clicks away. With that in mind, what risks do I need to be aware of?

regards,
mrdp

[noteirak]

Be aware that Virtualbox itself is not portable, so you'll need it to be installed locally first anyway.
For the rest, there is no special configuration, you'll just need to make sure the drive letter for your disk is the same on every computer you ran your VM from.

[mrdp]

understood ...

The plan is to have VirtualBox installed on the local computers, and have the guests' files on the external. I have both drive letters and drive names assigned to all my removable devices. I find that very helpful when having multiple removable devices plugged in at the same time. If I go to a machine which I have not used w/ removable media, I know how to assign a drive letter to make things work if necessary.

Thanks.

[Perryg]

I use an eSata drive (on my laptop) to store my guests and it works flawlessly and at native speed. One just need to be careful to shut down before turning off the external eSata drive. Actually with the smaller size of laptop drives one must find a way to store huge files.

Oh and one suggestion if you are planning to move the eSata between different machines. First never save state, shut down always. Second the two machine must be as close as possible to each other. AMD on one and Intel on the other will cause issues. 32-bit on one and 64-bit on the other will restrict you to only 32-bit guests.

[mrdp]

First never save state, shut down always.

Using an eSATA SSD, can I still save snapshots to use later since the snapshot is a copy of the machine's current state?

The User Manual 1.10.1 Taking, restoring and deleting snapshots states that a snapshot can be taken while a VM is running. This seems to address the issue of save state vs. shut down. If free space on the SSD becomes a potential issue, I have considered storing snapshot copies on a conventional (mechanical) 1TB external drive (USB) which is nearly empty. I am thinking that I should be able to copy a desired snapshot back to the SSD to restore the snapshot. Will that work?

Second the two machine must be as close as possible to each other. AMD on one and Intel on the other will cause issues. 32-bit on one and 64-bit on the other will restrict you to only 32-bit guests.

AMD vs. Intel and 32 vs. 64-bit is not a problem. I intend to keep those the same. Will i3 vs. i7 and 8GB vs 16GB RAM pose a problem?

[Perryg]

I believe snapshots to be evil. They give the user a false feeling of security when in fact they are like a house of cards. When one becomes corrupt the entire guest is toast. Most people look at snapshots like a restore point but that is far from what it really is. These are differencing disks not a backup. The only time I would consider using them is if I was just about to do something that could cause the guest problems and I need to find out if it truly will. If I find it does cause issues I can revert back to the disk that was good or delete the snapshot which merges the changes to the base.

As for SSD's I don't use them either. I see no need. They are way too expensive for storage and everyone tries all they can do to keep from writing to and from them to lengthen their life. What's the point? If they are not going to be used due to their short life expectation I fell just stick with what works and is affordable.

[mpack]

A snapshot is not a copy of a machines current state. A snapshot is a marker / restore point which you can use to revert to an earlier moment in time (provided you assume that nothing will ever go wrong with all this data. If you want a reliable way to be able to return to an earlier moment in time, make proper backups!).

From the rest of your comments it seems to me you are actually thinking of suspension, i.e. SAV files resulting from "Save the machine state". So, that's the wrong user manual section you're looking at.

[mrdp]

Thanks for the feedback on SSDs. That will be a welcome cost savings.

Virtualizaton is a relatively new topic for me. You have already corrected me on my understanding of the usefulness of snapshots. I may have some other misconceptions. Please help me sort this out.

My understanding is that virtual hardware settings (VHD size, number of processors used, and memory allocated) survive shut down. Configurations like user preferences, connectivity, permissions, etc. revert back to the default installation upon shut down. To preserve these characteristics, the state must be saved, or an image backup must be created. Is that correct?

[Perryg]

First thing is use VDI and not VHD. Next the state you shut down with is the sate you boot with.
Anything of any importance to the guest is stored in its control file. The only time anything reverts to default is when you tell it.

[mrdp]

Thanks. I''ll search out other details in the manual. I found viewtopic.php?f=6&t=43561 as a starting point in the forums. I may find other useful explanations as I drill deeper with searches.

[FlavioB]

AFAIK eSATA is just another "front-end" (or "back-end") for a SATA port. So there would be no different seeing a SATA port from a eSATA one.
What are you trying to achieve here exactly?

Hello there... I'd like to pop-in here and ask for help too.

My situation is as follows: I have 2 SATA disks which once were a (software) RAID-1 array on a Linux physical host. Now the hardware has gone, but the disks are still there. Thus I installed Ubuntu on a VirtualBox VM and attached one of my ex-RAID-1-HDD to the eSATA of my laptop. My question is now: Windows 8 is seeing the disk in the Device Manager, but I don't know how to get it mounted in Ubuntu VM. How do I achieve this?

Kind regards,
F.

[noteirak]

I am afraid this has nothing to do with this topic, except for the SATA part, which is a general use.
I can only advice you to start your own topic.