virtualbox.org

Greetings!

I am an old play-it-by-ear non-techie tinkerer enthralled by using VirtualBox to enable my dirt cheap eBay Mint 18 Linux-loaded Thinkpads to run Windows XP via the Windows 7 Enterprise trial package. An amazing job VirtualBox crew!

Two questions please! I've Googled for an answer to this but the results are mostly too tech to comprehend: My read is that VB has an "overclocking" mode that can help improve performance. Is VB overclocking safe for the health of your computer if I just VB an hour or two per day? My second question is exactly what do I copy and backup to my flash drive? Is it the ova or vmdk file in my VM folder?

One more thing please; I am using Dropbox in my VB Win 7 desktop and my normal Mint 18 desktop to exchange files between them (mostly as a way to shuttle Win apps into the VB). Is there another way for both sides to smoothly communicate?

Thanks for any assist!

Jim in NYC

jimwg wrote:My read is that VB has an "overclocking" mode that can help improve performance.

That sounds like nonsense to me. It doesn't have a clock/crystal at all, so how can you overclock?

Where did you read this?

VirtualBox is a hypervisor: the CPU is not simulated. The only clock is the one on the host motherboard (and readers should not confuse the clock/crystal with the RTC).

mpack wrote:

jimwg wrote:My read is that VB has an "overclocking" mode that can help improve performance.

Where did you read this?

Yes, I wanna know too! Please, Jim in NYC, post the link. Or a description on how to get to it. I wanna see what other gems are there.

jimwg wrote:Is there another way for both sides to smoothly communicate?

Several. I'll stick to the "simple" ones:

• The easiest one for simple file transfers is called Shared Folders. Read about it, Ch. "4.3 Shared folders" of the User Manual. It requires the installation of Guest Additions.
• Another way would be good, old, traditional network sharing. Search for SaMBa and enabling it in your host/guest.
• A third way would be to have an FTP/HTTP server in your host and serve your guest like that. Too convoluted if you ask me.

socratis wrote:

mpack wrote:

jimwg wrote:My read is that VB has an "overclocking" mode that can help improve performance.

Where did you read this?

Yes, I wanna know too! Please, Jim in NYC, post the link. Or a description on how to get to it. I wanna see what other gems are there.

I wasn't being facetious. Ubuntu mavens reported to me that the System/Acceleration panel with the hardware visualization aspects would help boost the performance of the whole virtual system as well when overclocking is engaged.

jimwg wrote:Is there another way for both sides to smoothly communicate?

mpack wrote:Several. I'll stick to the "simple" ones:

• The easiest one for simple file transfers is called Shared Folders. Read about it, Ch. "4.3 Shared folders" of the User Manual. It requires the installation of Guest Additions.
• Another way would be good, old, traditional network sharing. Search for SaMBa and enabling it in your host/guest.
• A third way would be to have an FTP/HTTP server in your host and serve your guest like that. Too convoluted if you ask me.

This is very helpful, especially the Guest Additions part though that'll take some deep reading to grasp the set-up details. It seems once up it works almost automatically with each boot-up, right? This is the way I'll likely go. Thanks.

Jim in NYC

jimwg wrote: I wasn't being facetious. Ubuntu mavens reported to me that the System/Acceleration panel with the hardware visualization aspects would help boost the performance of the whole virtual system as well when overclocking is engaged.

I wasn't being facetious either (Socratis made a joke, not I), but the information is mistaken. The Acceleration panel in VirtualBox is about accelerating performance in the VM, not in the host. In any case it doesn't involve overclocking whether in the host or the guest. I can't think of anything performance related on the host that could be improved by something you do in a VM.

I'd be surprised if overclocking made much difference to a VM - or really to anyone else in a modern PC. PCs today are seldom limited by CPU clock speed, but are instead limited by RAM speed, hard disk speed, network speed etc. Gamers used to overclock in order get better performance, back when software rendering was the norm, but even that is pointless today unless it's in the context of overclocking the GPU.

The easiest one for simple file transfers is called Shared Folders. Read about it, Ch. "4.3 Shared folders" of the User Manual. It requires the installation of Guest Additions.

It's a little tough for my mind to wrap around doing that, but fortunately there's a Ubuntu maven who's taking a crack at writing an automated script to install it so I'll keep you tuned.

The shared folders part is just an option in the VM settings to give the guest OS access to a folder on your host: and I suggest that you do make it a folder, and do not allow any VM access to a whole system drive.

You do have to install the Guest Additions, for that feature and many others (mouse integration, decent graphics).