virtualbox.org

Hello,
A recent upgrade of my hard disk imaging software (Macrium Reflect) added the capability to convert an existing host system disk image file to a VHD format file. My Windows 8 host image files contain my Virtual Box install and my Windows XP guest VMDK file. Would it make any sense at all to convert an existing host disk image file to the VHD format, since it would probably not be possible to run a Windows 8 Guest on some new PC and then run the "stored" XP VMDK file in another instance of VirtualBox running on that same new hardware (an XP virtual machine running inside a Windows 8 virtual machine acting as primarily a guest but then secondarily as a host)? On a weekly basis, I do an external backup of the complete Virtualbox VMs file in addition to a separate complete disk image of the host Windows 8 system. In daily use, I only use Windows 8 to host Virtualbox and my guest XP system....I do nothing on the host system at all except the weekly hard disk image. Thank you for assisting a semi-newbie.
OmaSteak

Nested virtualization is never a good idea, and is not supported. So I would recommend extracting the XP VM and run it alongside the Windows 8 VM, not within.

... and don't use VHD format, as it's the least well designed of the various formats, e.g. prone to corruption. If you want to use Macrium Reflect (or the free Disk2VHD tool, which can do the same), then convert the image file to VDI format before use.

Thank you for the information MPack...always very helpful. I'll just stick to my regular backup routines...complete disk image of host system and a separate external copy of my VMs folder on a weekly basis. I figured nested virtual machines was a really bad idea but the possibility was interesting. I also appreciate the info on VHD as a weak format...I'll steer clear of it.
OmaSteak