Virtual machine image on SD

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Mac OS X hosts.
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scami
Posts: 1
Joined: 21. Nov 2014, 23:11

Virtual machine image on SD

Post by scami »

Hi Guys,
I have a Macbook pro mid 2009 where I installed a 120gb SDD. Since the hard drive is very small I decided to put the virtual disk image vdi on an SD card which is formatted with the Mac OS extended filesystem (journaled). The virtual box guest (windows xp) start but it is very slow, and eventually crashes. Has any of you tried to install the virtual machine image on a SD card? Do you think the slow speed may be due to the filesystem I used to format the SD card?
Thanks for your help
Gutz_Otoole
Posts: 7
Joined: 2. Jul 2014, 15:20

Re: Virtual machine image on SD

Post by Gutz_Otoole »

Did you change the partition table to GUID?
socratis
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Posts: 27329
Joined: 22. Oct 2010, 11:03
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: VirtualBox+Oracle ExtPack
Guest OSses: Win(*>98), Linux*, OSX>10.5
Location: Greece

Re: Virtual machine image on SD

Post by socratis »

@Gutz_Otoole
 The partition table and the HD format has absolutely nothing to do with this.

@scami
An external hard drive (which is what your SD card is) will always be slower compared to your built-in hard drive. Especially if your built-in is an SSD. Nothing beats that ;)
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
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mpack
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Re: Virtual machine image on SD

Post by mpack »

Actually, HD format can have something to do with a crash: you don't want to locate a VM on a FAT formatted drive, though I see that isn't the case here.

I believe it's also considered a bad idea to put a journaling filesystem on a flash based memory. You want to avoid unnecessary writes, as it shortens the life of the drive.

And what size is the SD card?
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