Differences in Virtual Disk file types

LegacyOfWax

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I have been playing around with VM VirtualBox. When I go to make a new OS install it asks me to choose Hard Drive File Type.

VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image)
VMDK (Virtual Machine Disk)
VHD (Virtual Hard Disk)
HDD (Parallels Hard Disk)
QED (QEMU enchanced diak)
QCOW (QEMU Copy-On-Write)

I have googled and looked around a lot and in doing so in most things people have different as to what each is used/should be used for.

Just looking for some input as to what the differences between each of these, and witch is best to use.
*Note I am trying out different Linux Distros
-LinuxMint
-Ubuntu
-Parsix
and others

Thanks

WAX
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro/LinuxMint/Mac OS X
    CPU
    Intel i5
    Motherboard
    MSI Z87
    Memory
    8GB Kingston
    Monitor(s) Displays
    LG
    Hard Drives
    SSD-30GB
    SSD-240GB (Root Drive C:\)
    HDD-1Tb
    Keyboard
    Logitec
    Mouse
    Logitec
VDI is the native file type for VirtualBox and would be preferred unless you have a specific reason to do otherwise. The others are provided primarily for compatibility with other virtualization systems.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
Ok, so where I only use just VirtualBox I don't need to worry about the others. Unless I had another virtual software running on the system as well, like VM Ware.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro/LinuxMint/Mac OS X
    CPU
    Intel i5
    Motherboard
    MSI Z87
    Memory
    8GB Kingston
    Monitor(s) Displays
    LG
    Hard Drives
    SSD-30GB
    SSD-240GB (Root Drive C:\)
    HDD-1Tb
    Keyboard
    Logitec
    Mouse
    Logitec
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