I have Ubuntu 10.04 and I'm running Virtual Box 3.2.8 OSE running on my fairly standard laptop (2.4GHz i3, 2GB RAM, 5.4K RPM SATAII drive).
When I start up a WinXP my laptop hard drive light is just stuck on and everything on my laptop slows down, becoming unusable. I moved the .vdi hard drive image to an external USB drive (another 5.4k RPM drive) but the issue remains, although it happens less often (like "every other" time I start it up).
Without the VM running I have about 700-800MBs of RAM used. When I start up the VM (I have only assigned 768MBs to it) it gets to around 1.4GBs.
I just cant understand why with it being on my external drive it still causes my laptop hard drive light to lock on like it does.