One more tip.. When you install a Linux host, you can do so on a fairly small partition. My root filesystem currently resides on a 100GB SSD partition, but I am only using 24GB of that space -- and I have a massive load of software installed. This would be equivalent to using a small drive C: which could be restored quickly. By keeping your OS filesystem small, and your data stored on a different drive, it is quick and easy to recover from a disaster. If my primary drive dies, I boot the Knoppix thumb drive and 'dd' the 100GB (should really be around 32GB) image back onto a new hard drive. This brings back my entire Linux host, VMWare, and all of my application software.
The bulk of my personal data resides on a 2TB drive which is mounted to /home. That drive has been mirrored onto an external USB drive. If my /home drive dies, the USB drive can be mounted at /home to immediately resume operations until the dead drive can be replaced and restored.
The bottom line: To bring my entire environment back from the dead, I can restore a single 100GB image (should be resized to ~32GB), and/or mount a USB drive to /home. The important part: This could be done quickly onto a completely different PC, and all the VMs will never know the hardware changed.
The only thing is that with rollback, it does an ‘on boot’ menu- if a virus makes it impossible to boot, I can do a rollback to a time before the virus hit=- I’m sure there’s a way with doing this htrough running Linux if windows won’t not, I guess- but then we’re talking complicated stuff I’m not familiar with- but I suppose if worst came to worst- I could always just [plop a new hard-drive in after I get it formatted, and do like you said- drag and drop the VM backup onto it-
[[By keeping your OS filesystem small, and your data stored on a different drive, it is quick and easy to recover from a disaster.]]
That’s what I’d like to do- but I don’t know much about partitions and maintaining them- etc-
[[The bulk of my personal data resides on a 2TB drive which is mounted to /home. That drive has been mirrored onto an external USB drive. If my /home drive dies, the USB drive can be mounted at /home to immediately resume operations until the dead drive can be replaced and restored.]]
That’s exactly what I’d like to do (and kinda what I do with the duplicated drive- I plop it in and get a new drive to replace my dead one, then duplicate to that one, and walla, up and running (but the duplication takes a long time- about 14 hours lol)- but your system seems like it owudl be much quicker- and no real down time (ie having to physically remove hard-drive, install old back up one etc)
[[Those image files can then be drag/dropped right back onto a host as needed. I’m not sure about VirtualBox, but I strongly suspect it has snapshot capabilities similar to VMWare — for quick incremental backups.]]
That’s what rollback does- snapshots- it’s set up to do automatic ones at start up- or anytime I tell it to- and does so automatically- (which has saved my bacon many times as I’m terrible about doing manual things like manual backups) but it sounds like your system is the way to go Because I do Not want windows 10 and certainly don’t want it being the one connected to internet at all times now that they are including massive spyware and forced updates- just not happy with the way windows has decided to go- and like someone said they may try going to a cloud based system pay per month eventually- Uggh!
The only thing though is whether I can move files between the windows VM and the host os Linux? Looks like that might be a problem?