: A raw image file allocates its entire size on your physical disk from the moment it's created. For a 4GB Windows 98 VM, a raw image would immediately take up 4GB. A QCOW2 image, however, starts small and grows dynamically as data is added, making it incredibly space-efficient.
Forget Microsoft's updates. The community-built USP3 integrates years of stability fixes, USB patches, and registry tweaks. An updated image must have this pre-slipped.