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<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE topic PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN" "topic.dtd">
<topic xml:lang="en-us" id="settings-storage">
<title>Storage Settings</title>
<body>
<p>
The <b outputclass="bold">Storage</b> category in the VM
settings enables you to connect virtual hard disk, CD/DVD, and
floppy images and drives to your virtual machine.
</p>
<p>
In a real computer, so-called <i>storage
controllers</i> connect physical disk drives to the rest of
the computer. Similarly, Oracle VM VirtualBox presents virtual storage
controllers to a virtual machine. Under each controller, the
virtual devices, such as hard disks, CD/DVD or floppy drives,
attached to the controller are shown.
</p>
<note>
<p>
This section gives a quick introduction to the Oracle VM VirtualBox
storage settings. See <xref href="storage.dita#storage"/> for a full
description of the available storage settings in Oracle VM VirtualBox.
</p>
</note>
<p>
If you have used the <b outputclass="bold">Create Virtual
Machine</b> wizard to create a machine, you will normally
see something like the following:
</p>
<fig id="fig-storage-settings">
<title>Storage Settings for a Virtual Machine</title>
<image href="images/vm-settings-harddisk.png" width="10cm" placement="break"/>
</fig>
<p>
Depending on the guest OS type that you selected when you created
the VM, a new VM includes the following storage devices:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><b outputclass="bold">IDE controller.</b> A virtual
CD/DVD drive is attached to device 0 on the secondary channel
of the IDE controller.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><b outputclass="bold">SATA controller.</b> This is a
modern type of storage controller for higher hard disk data
throughput, to which the virtual hard disks are attached.
Initially you will normally have one such virtual disk, but as
shown in the previous screenshot, you can have more than one.
Each is represented by a disk image file, such as a VDI file
in this example.
</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>
If you created your VM with an older version of Oracle VM VirtualBox,
the default storage layout may differ. You might then only have an
IDE controller to which both the CD/DVD drive and the hard disks
have been attached. This might also apply if you selected an older
OS type when you created the VM. Since older OSes do not support
SATA without additional drivers, Oracle VM VirtualBox will make sure
that no such devices are present initially. See
<xref href="harddiskcontrollers.dita#harddiskcontrollers"/>.
</p>
<p>
Oracle VM VirtualBox also provides a <i>floppy
controller</i>. You cannot add devices other than floppy
drives to this controller. Virtual floppy drives, like virtual
CD/DVD drives, can be connected to either a host floppy drive, if
you have one, or a disk image, which in this case must be in RAW
format.
</p>
<p>
You can modify these media attachments freely. For example, if you
wish to copy some files from another virtual disk that you
created, you can connect that disk as a second hard disk, as in
the above screenshot. You could also add a second virtual CD/DVD
drive, or change where these items are attached. The following
options are available:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>
To <b outputclass="bold">add another virtual hard disk, or a
CD/DVD or floppy drive</b>, select the storage
controller to which it should be added (such as IDE, SATA,
SCSI, SAS, floppy controller) and then click the
<b outputclass="bold">Add Disk</b> button below the
tree. You can then either select <b outputclass="bold">Optical
Drive</b> or <b outputclass="bold">Hard
Disk</b>. If you clicked on a floppy controller, you
can add a floppy drive instead. Alternatively, right-click on
the storage controller and select a menu item there.
</p>
<p>
A dialog is displayed, enabling you to select an existing disk
image file or to create a new disk image file. Depending on
the type of disk image, the dialog is called
<b outputclass="bold">Hard Disk Selector</b>,
<b outputclass="bold">Optical Disk Selector</b>, or
<b outputclass="bold">Floppy Disk Selector</b>.
</p>
<p>
See <xref href="vdidetails.dita#vdidetails"/> for information on the image
file types that are supported by Oracle VM VirtualBox.
</p>
<p>
For virtual CD/DVD drives, the image files will typically be
in the standard ISO format instead. Most commonly, you will
select this option when installing an OS from an ISO file that
you have obtained from the Internet. For example, most Linux
distributions are available in this way.
</p>
<p>
Depending on the type of disk image, you can set the following
<b outputclass="bold">Attributes</b> for the disk image
in the right part of the Storage settings page:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>
The <b outputclass="bold">device slot</b> of the
controller that the virtual disk is connected to. IDE
controllers have four slots: primary device 0, primary
device 1, secondary device 0, and secondary device 1. By
contrast, SATA and SCSI controllers offer you up to 30
slots for attaching virtual devices.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><b outputclass="bold">Solid-state Drive</b>
presents a virtual disk to the guest as a solid-state
device.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><b outputclass="bold">Hot-pluggable</b> presents a
virtual disk to the guest as a hot-pluggable device.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
For virtual CD/DVD drives, you can select
<b outputclass="bold">Live CD/DVD</b>. This means
that the virtual optical disk is not removed from when the
guest system ejects it.
</p>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p>
To <b outputclass="bold">remove an attachment</b>,
either select it and click on the
<b outputclass="bold">Remove</b> icon at the bottom, or
right-click on it and select the menu item.
</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>
Removable media, such as CD/DVDs and floppies, can be changed
while the guest is running. Since the
<b outputclass="bold">Settings</b> window is not available
at that time, you can also access these settings from the
<b outputclass="bold">Devices</b> menu of your virtual
machine window.
</p>
</body>
</topic>
|
