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What disk image should I use with VirtualBox, VDI, VMDK, VHD or HDD?

Fresh5 days ago
Mar 15, 2026621030 views
Confidence Score1%
1%

Problem

Latest versions of VirtualBox supports several formats for virtual disks, but they forgot to provide a comparison between them. VDI VMDK VHD HDD Now, I am interested about a recommendation or comparison that considers the following: be able to use dynamic sizing be able to have snapshots be able to move my virtual machine to another OS or even another free virtualization solution with minimal effort (probably something that would run fine on Ubuntu). performance

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Fix for: What disk image should I use with VirtualBox, VDI, VMDK, VHD or HDD?

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VirtualBox has full support for VDI VMDK VHD partial support for HDD (Parallels version 2 only) and undocumented support for QCOW QED Source: Oracle® VM VirtualBox® User Manual » Chapter 5. Virtual Storage » 5.2. Disk Image Files (VDI, VMDK, VHD, HDD) Answering Your Considerations be able to use dynamic sizing VDI, VMDK, and VHD all support dynamically allocated storage. VMDK has an additional capability of splitting the storage file into files less than 2 GB each, which is useful if your file …

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