If desired, the virtual disk images can be flushed when the guest issues the IDE FLUSH CACHE command. Normally these requests are ignored for improved performance. The parameters below are only accepted for disk drives. They must not be set for DVD drives.

To enable flushing for IDE disks, issue the following command:

$ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name "VBoxInternal/Devices/piix3ide/0/LUN#[x]/Config/IgnoreFlush" 0

[x] specifies the disk. Enter 0 for device 0 on the primary channel, 1 for device 1 on the primary channel, 2 for device 0 on the secondary channel, or 3 for device 1 on the secondary channel.

To enable flushing for SATA disks, issue the following command:

$ VBoxManage setextradata VM-name "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/LUN#[x]/Config/IgnoreFlush" 0

The value [x] that selects the disk can be a value between 0 and 29.

Note that this does not affect the flushes performed according to the configuration described in . Restoring the default of ignoring flush commands is possible by setting the value to 1 or by removing the key.