How to connect a hard drive to VirtualBox

Running VirtualBox with an external hard drive is a great way to extend the functionality of your virtual machine. Users can enjoy multiple benefits when they mount a USB hard drive in VirtualBox. However, there are some limitations and potential risks you may encounter. You need to know how to mount an external hard drive in VirtualBox efficiently. This article talks about how to create a hard drive in VirtualBox, the advantages of using an external storage device, and some of the problems you need to avoid.

Contents:

1. Why to work with external hard drive in VirtualBox.
2. Use Extention pack to enable hard drive in VirtualBox.
3. VirtualBox Raw Hard Disk Access
4. Try the software to access external Hard drive
5. The risks you can face when mount an external hard drive to VirtualBox.

The reasons to mount an external hard drive in VirtualBox

There are several reasons to mount a hard drive in VirtualBox, such as retaining your old OS and data as you move to a new system, isolating two OS versions, or just increasing productivity and the functionality of your VMs.

• A physical hard drive attached to a VirtualBox VM adds flexibility to your computer. It allows you to run multiple operating systems simultaneously to facilitate software testing or run programs that require a specific environment.
  
  
• An external hard drive may be necessary to enable users to run certain applications or operating systems that are incompatible with virtual drives. You can install an alternate OS or applications on a physical drive and then access and run them from VirtualBox to eliminate compatibility issues.
  
  
• You can make an old operating system and its data available from a VM by using an external hard drive to store the data and code from the previous OS. Users can access the old OS through VirtualBox.
  
  
• Implementing a physical hard drive with VirtualBox lets you isolate an operating system or application, minimizing possible security concerns. Sensitive data can remain on the external drive rather than being transferred to a virtual drive that may be less secure.

VirtualBox Raw Hard Disk Access

There are multiple methods of accessing the data on a hard drive from within virtual environments. One option is to use the contents of a physical drive to create a virtual hard disk image. At times, it may be more beneficial to mount or boot a physical hard drive directly from a guest VM.

VirtualBox enables you to mount all or part of a hard drive. You can designate specific partitions to be mounted or choose to use the complete disk. We will be discussing the method known as VirtualBox raw hard disk access. This is where the whole VirtualBox physical hard drive is mounted. The advantages of this method include giving users the ability to boot their system from an external USB drive or additional hard disk.

We will demonstrate how to accomplish this on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux host operating systems.

Note: You should always backup your data before attempting to mount drives or partitions in your virtual machine. Avoid mounting or booting the partition running the host operating system, as it may result in substantial data corruption.

The VMDK that is created is a small file that acts as a pointer to the physical hard drive. To use the disk, you just attach the VMDK to your virtual machine. Perform the following steps after opening to VirtualBox GUI.

1. Select the desired virtual machine that will access the disk.
2. Click “Settings > Storage > Add Hard Disk”.
3. Select the “Choose existing drive” option.
4. Choose the VMDK file previously created.

Your virtual machine can now boot from the physical drive associated with the VMDK file.