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How to create a virtual machine with a pre-installed OS and applications up and running instantly in any PC?

I'm using shared PCs in the library which have special hardware that will regenerate the harddisk image after a reboot. Although I can use their hard disk freely but any applications installed will be lost after reboot. I want to be able to run my applications instantly without having to reinstall everything after every reboot. Furthermore, I need to be able to install those applications that require reboot during their installation process.

My idea is to use a Virtual machine. Installing a Virtual machine is the only overhead I need to bear with which is acceptable provided that the virtual machine installation doesn't require reboot by itself. VirtualBox is a good candidate. But the problem is that I have quite a large volume of preinstalled applications which cannot be fitted into a single DVD/USB drive. The PCs have 1 DVD drive and 2 USB ports, so I can combine them for my need. But, that would means my virtual disk image file must be split into 3 physical files (1 in DVD, 2 in 2 USB drives) in order to be up and running INSTANTLY (ok I can zip a large file into multiple DVDs but that requires a lengthy unzip process).

Questions:

  1. How to make VirtualBox (or any other virtual machines) to split the disk image file (.VDI) into multiple files that can be used instantly. Is it via snapshot?
  2. Apart from virtualbox is there anyother virtual machine that does not require reboot during its installation process?

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Why don't you get an external hard drive? You can get a 1 terabyte drive for $100-$150. It would connect using USB and allow you to have a massive .VDI file.

This doesn't answer your questions, but it may answer your problem.

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