In today’s article, we are going to see how to share files and folders from PC to VirtualBox virtual machine in minutes. It is a process that is too easy to carry out and above all very useful for a large number of situations such as testing programs or another operating system directly, increasing the size of the hard disk and configuring and connecting virtual machines via Wi-Fi or an external network.
What is VirtualBox?
It is a program that allows us to have an operating system independent of ours on any kind of computer, whether it has Windows, Linux or Mac as the main OS. In short, it creates virtual machines which can be used as if they were a computer with another operating system, totally different from the one we have on our PC, this can be installed as if it were any other program.
Best of all, what is done in the virtual machine will work independently of our operating system. Both the installed programs and anything you run on it.
In this way, you will be able to run different programs which were made for other operating systems. You also have the possibility to directly test different OS in case you want to learn how to handle them. For example: let’s pretend that you are very used to Windows, but you want to learn how to use Ubuntu.
Thanks to a virtual machine you can install the Linux OS and use it as if your computer had Ubuntu, it works in the same way, without any limitation. At the same time, it is quite useful for testing different programs, since anything that happens in the virtual machine will not affect the computer in general. If the virtual machine is affected by some malware, it would not affect the actual installation of your operating system.
When you create a virtual machine you must allocate space on the hard disk, RAM memory, USB ports, sound card, etc. It is not complicated at all and another thing you can do is share files between VirtualBox and the operating system you are using. How? That is what we are going to see a little below, step by step.
- The first thing you should do is open VirtualBox and then click on the ” Start ” button for the virtual machine to start working.
- After this, you will have to go to ” Devices ” and then to ” Install Guest Additions “.
- Next, you will have to go to the file explorer of your computer.
- Now go to ” My Computer ” and then you will have to double click on ” CD Drive (D): VirtualBox Guest Additions ” this will have to be installed like any other program on your computer.
- After finishing the installation you will have to go to ” Devices “, now in ” Shared folders ” and then again in ” Shared folders ” you will have to click on the ” + ” symbol.
- You will be able to appreciate that a dialog box appears where you must choose the path of the folder you want to share and then choose a name, it can be the one you want.
- In case you do not want the folder to be deleted once you restart the virtual machine, then you will have to check the option that says ” Make permanent ” and then ” OK “.
- After this, you will have to confirm that the path of the folder you want to share is correct. If so, then click on ” OK “.
- When the shared folder is created, then you will be able to access the folder in question from the virtual machine with all the files you have on your computer.
- What you should do is go to ” File Explorer ” this time from the left sidebar go to ” Network ” and then double click on VBOXSVR “which would be the shared folder.