virtualbox.org

Hi.

I recently upgraded to Windows 10 (host) and I am experiencing problems with the immutable HD.

When I start a Windows (10 and XP) guest from an immutable disk, whenever I turn off the machine and turn it on again this comes back to the initial state.
This does not occur with other immutable linux that I have.

What could be happening?

What do you expect from an immutable hard disk? As described in section 5.4 of the user manual, immutable hard disks only remember write accesses temporarily while the VM is running and all changes are lost when the VM is powered on the next time.

McA wrote:This does not occur with other immutable linux that I have

Yes it does, the virtual hardware does not change behaviour because a different guest OS is installed.

From your implication otherwise my first guess was that you haven't actually installed Linux, i.e. you're stilling running it in live CD mode, relying on suspended states to maintain ramdisk contents. However even that doesn't make sense, since if you reboot a live CD Linux then that too would lose any changes you had made - a CD being immutable by nature.

My first guess was he didn't install Linux on an immutable drive.

Very possible, though he does refer to it as "immutable Linux".

Yes he did. I just assume he was mistaken.

My apologies if I have not explained well the first time.
I'm gonna try to explain my problem again, but this time with some pictures and step by step.

First of all, I create a VM and install normally a windows 10.
After have ready my VM, I power off and go to "File->Virtual Media Manager..." and here I release the HDD.
After this, modify the HDD and make them Immutable.
Finally I attach the immutable HDD again to the VM, and this it's what I have (see the image).


Until here everything's right.

But if I power on the VM, make any change (create a file for example). After power off the VM and power on again, the changes don't persist in the differencing HDD.
But if I do the same in a linux machine (a Kali in my case), these persist.

Why?
Is now understood my question?

PD:
When I was a Windows 7 as host, this did not happen.

I will try to explain once more. When you make a HDD immutable, it will no longer save changes. It doesn't matter if you are using an OSX, Windows or Linux host.

Good grief, just read the manual about immutable. Not part of it read it all.

http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch05.h ... magewrites