: You can create a "base" Windows 8 image and spin up multiple linked VMs that only store the differences from that base, saving massive amounts of storage. How to Create a Windows 8 QCOW2 Image
QCOW2 is a file format for disk image files used by QEMU. It stands for "QEMU Copy On Write." Unlike raw disk images, which allocate the entire defined size of the disk immediately (e.g., creating a 40 GB file for a 40 GB drive), QCOW2 is sparse. It grows dynamically as data is written to it. windows 8 qcow2
