Shared Folders in Sun VirtualBox is a good option to share data between virtual machine (guest) and physical machine (Host).  This post explains how you can setup shared folders in VirtualBox with read and write access on physical partition in host.

In my earlier post, I explained about accessing physical disk and partition as raw disk in virtual machine. Its a raw disk access and not having real time read or write access on disk. But it worked as one of drive in host. Shared folders in VirtualBox work as network share between host and guest with real time read and write access. In this example, my host is windows 7 and guest is windows XP. I’m going to access Windows 7 host partition in Windows XP guest VirtualBox virtual machine.

Seamless mode is one of the greatest feature in Sun VirtualBox desktop virtualization software. It’s like ‘Unity Mode’ in VMware workstation. Seamless mode allows you to work on guest (virtual) machine in host’s desktop. So, every time you don’t need to switch between guest and host. Just work from host desktop only.

Most of the desktop virtualization software users do not know about this unity mode or seamless mode. But it’s very useful and helps to access host and guest in same time.

Let me explain how seamless mode works in Sun VirtualBox and what are the requirements for it.