Ralph and Garry,
I got the info regarding risk of installing on hard drive here: http://virt-tools.org/learning/install- ... mand-line/
"File, logical volume or SAN? Storing the disk as a plain host file is the easiest option. As long as you have enough free space, you can put the file anywhere, and move it around later. However file access isn't very fast, so for the best performance you should choose an LVM2 logical volume (LV) or (if you have it) a dedicated LUN on your SAN storage. Using a host partition or host disk directly is not recommended for security reasons."
I assumed because any malware could more easily gain access to your hard drive if the vm were stored there, perhaps wrongly. Since I don't have a SAN, USB stick seemed logical. I am perfectly happy to leave it on my hard drive though if there indeed isn't much risk, and to enable file sharing.
Ralph, I don't have time this second to try your instructions. I will get to it later and report.
Regarding gnome3, can't say I am a big fan, but I was using Ubuntu (was turned off when they started sharing private searches with Amazon without telling anyone) and then Linux Mint, only to discover that Mint embedded flash into the OS or so appeared to me, with a file called mintflash or something like that. I remove all flash off my hard drive as a matter of habit and then install it on a virtual machine for security and privacy reasons. When i removed mintflash, Mint broke... Debian now seems the most secure, private, and supportable Linux distribution to me, and gnome seems most respectful of individual privacy and greeny friendly (again to me), so I can put up with the gnomish behavior, but this might be an argument for another thread.
I very much appreciate your help.