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