If you chose dynamically allocated, the disk size you choose here will be the max size the disk can grow. You will get this screen regardless of which option you chose previously. Next, you can adjust the size of the virtual hard disk. This means your virtual machine will run faster overall. The only advantage to a fixed size disk is that it is usually faster to use. On the next screen, you have to choose whether you want the new virtual disk to grow dynamically or whether you want to use a fixed size disk. If you plan to move this virtual machine to another platform in the future, then make sure to choose the appropriate file type. VDI is the format used by VirtualBox, VHD is used by Microsoft’s Hyper-V and VMDK is used by VMware. A VM without a hard drive is pretty useless, so go ahead and choose Create a virtual hard disk now, unless you already have one created.Ĭlick Create and the next screen will give you three options for the hard disk file type. Next, you have the option of adding a virtual hard disk to the virtual machine or not. It’ll give you a recommended amount, but you can always manually adjust this by using the slider. Next, choose the amount of memory you would like to assign to your virtual machine. If VirtualBox is showing you only 32-bit options and no 64-bit options, check out this post for the remedy. Ideally, you should install the 64-bit versions of operating systems. The program only gave me options for 32-bit because I used older hardware. In my case, I chose Linux for Type and then chose Ubuntu. You can install a lot of different operating systems using this tool, but we are just working with Ubuntu Linux here. On the following screen, we have to choose the operating system. The first time you should use the guided wizard.

Note that once you are familiar with the process of setting up a virtual machine in VirtualBox, you can click on the Expert Mode button to get through all the settings much faster.

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