Which drive(s) are best for installing VM's, hypervisor, native OS?

[cessnat37]

I'm getting a book with CD to learn more about Linux. It comes with labs, practice exams and quizzes, and three virtual machines. My hardware is below.

I have an Intel Core i3 with 3.7 Ghz dual core
7200 rpm 500 GB SATA drive
16GB RAM
Intel integrated graphics.

I'd really like to keep the host OS (Linux Mint 18) on the SATA drive, and put the virtual machines/hypervisor/guest operating systems on an external USB solid state drive. I'm new to virtualization. How to people normally set up VM's? I did some research on this. But it looks like there are a few different options for this.

[mr_raider]

The guest requires a virtual hard drive. You can specify the location of that disk anywhere you like, including an external drive.

Most people use an internal drive, since they are usually faster. I generally recommend to keep your frequently used guests on your fastest drives, and keep less used machines in other drives, and move them as needed.

[cessnat37]

Does the hypervisor go on the same drive as the guest(s)?

[mr_raider]

Does the hypervisor go on the same drive as the guest(s)?

By default yes. It goes on a subfolder under your home.

You can however change that location in the virtualbox general preferences. Furthermore the entire guest is in it's own folder, which you can move around.

[cessnat37]

Ok. Thank you.

[dcrowder]

The VM's "hard drive" is just a folder of files. You can put in anywhere you like, even your home directory. Putting it on a secondary internal drive may get better performance.