Win7 Guest on Mac OS & Win7 hosts from external drive

[JohnJohnson]

Hi everyone !!!

I am having a very complicated issue with my VM that is installed on my mac os x

what we have
Host:MacOS X
Guest:Win7 (im using it for 3 months already so no need to create new one)

What I need to do is
To move my Guest:Win7 to external drive and be able to have my VM accessible both on MacOS and WIN7

Please help me to find solution if its possible.

P.S. was thinking to do this with portable version of virtualbox but it does not support MacOS

Thanks

[Perryg]

How to move guests created with => version 4.*

[JohnJohnson]

Thanks for your link it worked for me now I have the same windows 7 in my USB stick that I can attach to any PC but there is another issue now.
When I start windows from USB its extremely slow and its taking around 10-15 mins to load and shut down.

The stick is USB 3.0 as the usb ports on both MAC and WIN7 hosts.

Thanks in advance

[Perryg]

That's all I have as I don't do Windows so someone that does will stop by. I can say that USB anything is usually slower than a regular drive and if the install is new it may be that Windows is updating which makes it run really slow until it finishes.

[JohnJohnson]

The install is not new and all the updates are turned off. Just when I run it its taking too long to load the windows and after loading its frozen for about 5 mins. I also think that the slowness is because of USB but maybe there is some solution to make it work a little bit faster as its almost impossible to work on it (its slow as that).

Anyone has any experience with USB stick located guest os?

Unfortunately I cant use portable vbox as one of the hosts is mac and never had chance to work with portable version. Is it also slow or not?

[BillG]

I would expect a vm running with its virtual disk on a USB drive to be very slow.

Portable virtualbox is an independent fork and is not supported here.

[socratis]

When I start windows from USB its extremely slow and its taking around 10-15 mins to load and shut down.

That sounds about right. Whenever I boot my Mac from an external USB3 drive with Win10, it takes that much...

[mpack]

Anyone has any experience with USB stick located guest os?

"USB stick" covers a lot of territory, and having a USB3 compatible connector doesn't necessarily prove that it can really do USB 3 max speeds. Can you describe this "USB stick"? I.e. make and model?

[JohnJohnson]

Offering data transfer rates up to 400MB/sec, the Store ‘n’ Go Vx400 USB Drive is the ultimate in speed, for users that demand maximum performance in data storage devices.* Utilizing a dual-channel USB 3.0 interface, and featuring high-performance MLC flash and a high-performance USB 3.0 controller, the Vx400 facilitates large data transfers at lightning fast speeds, ideal for transferring large video files and libraries of data – FAST. The Vx400 features a sleek, metal housing with retractable USB connector, keeping your data protected without the worry of losing a cap.

* Requires USB 3.0 port for optimum performance

[mpack]

I see, Verbatim Vx400. That seems like a decent make, so not some cheap import with fake specs, which was the main thing I wanted to establish.

Interestingly, I do see an Amazon.com review which says that this device mounts as USB2 on at least some OS X hosts. It would be interesting to see the output of the following host terminal command while that device is mounted:-

Code: Select all

VBoxManage list usbhost

[JohnJohnson]

I can do that tomorrow but not only Mac is slow but my other laptop OS is win7 and when I plug that USB stick there I have the same slow startup and almost non usable windows guest

[mpack]

Well, as Socratis also said, I would not expect Win7 to be fast on a USB stick. Win7 does a lot of I/O on startup, and on anything less than an SSD it can be pretty slow. But, you should certainly experiment with other makes of USB stick.

Note that I/O is being performed by the host OS, so I don't see how this can be a VirtualBox problem. It must be a problem of either the host or the USB stick.

[StefPar]

So do you find a solution ? I have the same issue with verbatim. Vx400. I bought this to run vms but with no hope due to slow speed issue. Transfer rate to other files is about 370 read 180 write!

[socratis]

A USB stick is not a good idea for continuous random read-write operations. You can't expect to run a VM fast from a USB stick. Or a USB hard drive for that matter. It is what it is. If you were planning on doing that, sorry...

[StefPar]

I know that ordinary usb flash cannot but Socratis, this usb flash I think it has same technology as an ssd drive “Mlc” so for this reason I try to run VMs. After a few search I find that has lower performance on transfer 4K files that is default block size on most OS correct me if am wrong!