19.3. Disk Options

This section provides information about disk options.

Generic Drive

-drive <option>[,<option>[,<option>[,...]]]
Supported with the following options:
  • readonly[on|off]
  • werror[enospc|report|stop|ignore]
  • rerror[report|stop|ignore]
  • id=<id>
    Id of the drive has the following limitation for if=none:
    • IDE disk has to have <id> in following format: drive-ide0-<BUS>-<UNIT>
      Example of correct format:
      -drive if=none,id=drive-ide0-<BUS>-<UNIT>,... -device ide-drive,drive=drive-ide0-<BUS>-<UNIT>,bus=ide.<BUS>,unit=<UNIT>
  • file=<file>
    Value of <file> is parsed with the following rules:
    • Passing floppy device as <file> is not supported.
    • Passing cd-rom device as <file> is supported only with cdrom media type (media=cdrom) and only as IDE drive (either if=ide or if=none + -device ide-drive).
    • If <file> is neither block nor character device, it must not contain ':'.
  • if=<interface>
    The following interfaces are supported: none, ide, virtio, floppy.
  • index=<index>
  • media=<media>
  • cache=<cache>
    Supported values: none, writeback or writethrough.
  • copy-on-read=[on|off]
  • snapshot=[yes|no]
  • serial=<serial>
  • aio=<aio>
  • format=<format>
    This option is not required and can be omitted. However, this is not recommended for raw images because it represents security risk. Supported formats are:
    • qcow2
    • raw

Boot Option

-boot [order=<drives>][,menu=[on|off]]

Snapshot Mode

-snapshot