Virtualbox

[Fred Claus]

Has anyone ever tried to run virtualBox from a flashdrive? By that I mean the virtualBox software and the vms are all on the USB and it runs from any computer you plug it into? Is it possible, or can only the vms be on the USB and virtual box needs to be installed on the computer for it to run?

 

[Fred Claus]

Is it possible? The short answer is no, but the longer answer might be yes.

The Windows version of Virtualbox needs to install a couple of device drivers which would normally preclude it from running purely from a portable device, but there's a project at https://www.vbox.me/ which claims to work around this by temporarily installing these drivers, running Virtualbox as normal, then cleaning itself up afterwards.

I haven't tried it myself but it looks promising.

(Repeatedly edited because my phone keeps changing "Virtualbox" to "Virtual ox", which I assume is some kind of Farmville add-on.)

Thanks for the link, I'll have to check it out. By the way, I haven't played Farmville in a long time. Brings back memories.

 

[NviGate Systems]

Qemu might be able to do this. But I do warn you, that could kill the flash drive. Consumer flash drives are not meant for IO that a VM uses, I've had drives that packed in very early in life due to this. A portable SSD would be better

 

[Blackhammer]

I am pretty sure that the software Linux Live USB Creator creates a portable copy of VirtualBox on a thumbdrive for you to mount the operating system on .