Fixed size hard drive – a disk image file is created with the specified size.The main advantage of using this feature is that you are not wasting the disk space on the host before it is required, but there is a disadvantage associated with it in that it results in a slow performance if disk expansion happens pretty frequently. However, during the creation of a dynamically expanding disk, you specify a maximum capacity, which is the maximum capacity the disk will expand to. Dynamically allocated hard drive – the disk image will be created with a minimal size, but it grows automatically when more space is needed by the guest operating system.You can create two kinds of disk images: fixed size images or dynamically allocated images: HDD – the image file of Parallels Version 2 format.VHD – the Microsoft format of a virtual hard disk.VMDK – the VMware format of a virtual hard disk. We all have the partitioned physical hard disk drives on our system.VDI – also known as Virtual Disk Image.These two types refer to thick and thin provisioning.įour types of disk images are supported by VirtualBox: Select the position where your virtual disk file will be created and designate the size of your virtual disk. It is a single file that replicates every bit of data that exists across all sectors of the CD/DVD. When you want to digitize CDs and DVDs, you can create a disc image. Some drives can only read from discs, but recent drives are commonly both readers and recorders, also called burners or. Virtual CD drive files are normally attached to virtual machines (VMs), and function as system or data drives for the VM. Upon creation, the entire size of the virtual disk might be used for the image or the image might be dynamically expanded. In computing, an optical disc drive (ODD) is a disk drive that uses laser light or electromagnetic waves within or near the visible light spectrum as part of the process of reading or writing data to or from optical discs. It has size that is basically specified when you create the VM. A virtual disk image is similar to a physical hard disk. When a guest VM tries to access these disk images, the read/write disk access is redirected by VirtualBox to the virtual disk image. In VirtualBox, guest VMs accesses virtual disk images that are stored on the physical hard disk in the host computer.