Virtual Box set up ? for new installation

[Cressida]

I  am setting up my new computer and want to set it up to run WinXP in Virtual Box instead of the dual boot option.  (I am making progress to be Microsoft free but there are a couple of  applications that I still need to run from time to time - and they don't work in Wine now.  I am not a gamer BTW).

I will do the  installation based on the excellent article by P. Arnote from page 10 or the Oct. edition of PCL Magazine.

http://pclosmag.com/pdf/102008.pdf

1.  Will I need to increase the size of the "/" partition on the HD to allow space for the VB to work/run ?   (I was planning on 10 to 15 GB for / partition )   If so how much?

2. My system sees ~2.9 GB of my 4 GB of memory and I am thinking of allowing 512mb of ram for the VB - should I allow a full 1 GB in in case I later use the VB to test other Linux distributions ?   Does this take the ram away from PCLOS when running the VB?  I'm not sure what the sweet spot for VB ram is but I don't plan on running the VB very often.

3.  Would the WinXP when running in VB be able to open and read my documents stored on another partition on the HD that was formated using "Ext 4" -  that would be something if I don't have to set up a NTSF partition for the WinXP ?

4.  Would I be able to replace the WinXP with Win 7 down the road sometime if I ever wanted to use Win 7 ?

[menotu]

1.  Will I need to increase the size of the "/" partition on the HD to allow space for the VB to work/run ?   (I was planning on 10 to 15 GB for / partition )   If so how much?

By default, Virtualbox uses /home as the area for the VBox Virtual Machines and Hard Drives, BUT they can be moved if you so wish.  

I would suggest increasing it by 15Gb - a VM can normally start off as just a few Gigs but they do "expand" as you install more software and media etc (I normally set my VBox hard drives at approx 8 - 10Gb each)

2. My system sees ~2.9 GB of my 4 GB of memory and I am thinking of allowing 512mb of ram for the VB - should I allow a full 1 GB in in case I later use the VB to test other Linux distributions ?   Does this take the ram away from PCLOS when running the VB?  I'm not sure what the sweet spot for VB ram is but I don't plan on running the VB very often.

As with most RAM, give it as much as you can afford too - more the better.

You may want to consider installing an .pae kernel as that will see approx 3.95Gb of your 4Gb, which then allows more for the VBox VM's.

But, as the settings aren't set in stone you can tweak the VB memory settings in 2 seconds. So you can start with 512Mb and add more if necessary.

3.  Would the WinXP when running in VB be able to open and read my documents stored on another partition on the HD that was formated using "Ext 4" -  that would be something if I don't have to set up a NTSF partition for the WinXP ?

Yup - just need to network it to see your other drive(s) BUT Windows cannot see/read Ext4 partitions so you would need to add some software which can.

4.  Would I be able to replace the WinXP with Win 7 down the road sometime if I ever wanted to use Win 7 ?

Again, Yup - just think of VBox hard drives as you would a "normal" one therefore you can install/reinstall at leisure.

I often - when I have it setup as I like - make a backup copy of my VM hard drive(s) as they can be used again and it saves reinstalling etc.  The only real limiting factor is regular hard drive space to store them  

[kjpetrie]

Menotu beat me to it -

The first thing I would do is install the .pae kernel so your system can see all your memory. VMs use a lot of it. It is the VMs not VB which use memory and if you plan to have more than one running at a time you will take up more. 256MB is adequate for XP and unless you're planning to use memory-intensive applications there 512 is just wasted.

By default, the Virtual machines and their hard disc files live in ~/.VirtualBox, so it is your /home partition which needs to be big enough to store the VM files. / can stay as it is. You might prefer to use a dedicated partition for VMs, in which case you should have it mounted on ~/.VirtualBox so your machines can be separate from your install.

VMs cannot see anything on the host system to which they are not specifically granted access. There are several methods for doing that, but to the guest OS they appear as network file systems.

You can run win 7, but it needs a whopping 1GB of memory for the VM, which is why I won't touch it on my system.