VirtualBox

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1<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
2<!DOCTYPE topic PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN" "topic.dtd">
3<topic xml:lang="en-us" id="settings-storage">
4 <title>Storage Settings</title>
5
6 <body>
7 <p>
8 The <b outputclass="bold">Storage</b> category in the VM
9 settings enables you to connect virtual hard disk, CD/DVD, and
10 floppy images and drives to your virtual machine.
11 </p>
12 <p>
13 In a real computer, so-called <i>storage
14 controllers</i> connect physical disk drives to the rest of
15 the computer. Similarly, Oracle VM VirtualBox presents virtual storage
16 controllers to a virtual machine. Under each controller, the
17 virtual devices, such as hard disks, CD/DVD or floppy drives,
18 attached to the controller are shown.
19 </p>
20 <note>
21 <p>
22 This section gives a quick introduction to the Oracle VM VirtualBox
23 storage settings. See <xref href="storage.dita#storage"/> for a full
24 description of the available storage settings in Oracle VM VirtualBox.
25 </p>
26 </note>
27 <p>
28 If you have used the <b outputclass="bold">Create Virtual
29 Machine</b> wizard to create a machine, you will normally
30 see something like the following:
31 </p>
32 <fig id="fig-storage-settings">
33 <title>Storage Settings for a Virtual Machine</title>
34 <image href="images/vm-settings-harddisk.png" width="10cm" placement="break"/>
35 </fig>
36 <p>
37 Depending on the guest OS type that you selected when you created
38 the VM, a new VM includes the following storage devices:
39 </p>
40 <ul>
41 <li>
42 <p><b outputclass="bold">IDE controller.</b> A virtual
43 CD/DVD drive is attached to device 0 on the secondary channel
44 of the IDE controller.
45 </p>
46 </li>
47 <li>
48 <p><b outputclass="bold">SATA controller.</b> This is a
49 modern type of storage controller for higher hard disk data
50 throughput, to which the virtual hard disks are attached.
51 Initially you will normally have one such virtual disk, but as
52 shown in the previous screenshot, you can have more than one.
53 Each is represented by a disk image file, such as a VDI file
54 in this example.
55 </p>
56 </li>
57 </ul>
58 <p>
59 If you created your VM with an older version of Oracle VM VirtualBox,
60 the default storage layout may differ. You might then only have an
61 IDE controller to which both the CD/DVD drive and the hard disks
62 have been attached. This might also apply if you selected an older
63 OS type when you created the VM. Since older OSes do not support
64 SATA without additional drivers, Oracle VM VirtualBox will make sure
65 that no such devices are present initially. See
66 <xref href="harddiskcontrollers.dita#harddiskcontrollers"/>.
67 </p>
68 <p>
69 Oracle VM VirtualBox also provides a <i>floppy
70 controller</i>. You cannot add devices other than floppy
71 drives to this controller. Virtual floppy drives, like virtual
72 CD/DVD drives, can be connected to either a host floppy drive, if
73 you have one, or a disk image, which in this case must be in RAW
74 format.
75 </p>
76 <p>
77 You can modify these media attachments freely. For example, if you
78 wish to copy some files from another virtual disk that you
79 created, you can connect that disk as a second hard disk, as in
80 the above screenshot. You could also add a second virtual CD/DVD
81 drive, or change where these items are attached. The following
82 options are available:
83 </p>
84 <ul>
85 <li>
86 <p>
87 To <b outputclass="bold">add another virtual hard disk, or a
88 CD/DVD or floppy drive</b>, select the storage
89 controller to which it should be added (such as IDE, SATA,
90 SCSI, SAS, floppy controller) and then click the
91 <b outputclass="bold">Add Disk</b> button below the
92 tree. You can then either select <b outputclass="bold">Optical
93 Drive</b> or <b outputclass="bold">Hard
94 Disk</b>. If you clicked on a floppy controller, you
95 can add a floppy drive instead. Alternatively, right-click on
96 the storage controller and select a menu item there.
97 </p>
98 <p>
99 A dialog is displayed, enabling you to select an existing disk
100 image file or to create a new disk image file. Depending on
101 the type of disk image, the dialog is called
102 <b outputclass="bold">Hard Disk Selector</b>,
103 <b outputclass="bold">Optical Disk Selector</b>, or
104 <b outputclass="bold">Floppy Disk Selector</b>.
105 </p>
106 <p>
107 See <xref href="vdidetails.dita#vdidetails"/> for information on the image
108 file types that are supported by Oracle VM VirtualBox.
109 </p>
110 <p>
111 For virtual CD/DVD drives, the image files will typically be
112 in the standard ISO format instead. Most commonly, you will
113 select this option when installing an OS from an ISO file that
114 you have obtained from the Internet. For example, most Linux
115 distributions are available in this way.
116 </p>
117 <p>
118 Depending on the type of disk image, you can set the following
119 <b outputclass="bold">Attributes</b> for the disk image
120 in the right part of the Storage settings page:
121 </p>
122 <ul>
123 <li>
124 <p>
125 The <b outputclass="bold">device slot</b> of the
126 controller that the virtual disk is connected to. IDE
127 controllers have four slots: primary device 0, primary
128 device 1, secondary device 0, and secondary device 1. By
129 contrast, SATA and SCSI controllers offer you up to 30
130 slots for attaching virtual devices.
131 </p>
132 </li>
133 <li>
134 <p><b outputclass="bold">Solid-state Drive</b>
135 presents a virtual disk to the guest as a solid-state
136 device.
137 </p>
138 </li>
139 <li>
140 <p><b outputclass="bold">Hot-pluggable</b> presents a
141 virtual disk to the guest as a hot-pluggable device.
142 </p>
143 </li>
144 <li>
145 <p>
146 For virtual CD/DVD drives, you can select
147 <b outputclass="bold">Live CD/DVD</b>. This means
148 that the virtual optical disk is not removed from when the
149 guest system ejects it.
150 </p>
151 </li>
152 </ul>
153 </li>
154 <li>
155 <p>
156 To <b outputclass="bold">remove an attachment</b>,
157 either select it and click on the
158 <b outputclass="bold">Remove</b> icon at the bottom, or
159 right-click on it and select the menu item.
160 </p>
161 </li>
162 </ul>
163 <p>
164 Removable media, such as CD/DVDs and floppies, can be changed
165 while the guest is running. Since the
166 <b outputclass="bold">Settings</b> window is not available
167 at that time, you can also access these settings from the
168 <b outputclass="bold">Devices</b> menu of your virtual
169 machine window.
170 </p>
171 </body>
172
173</topic>
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