VB Manager GUI move machine from local hard drive to external HD

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Schaffstein
Posts: 13
Joined: 5. Mar 2018, 14:33

VB Manager GUI move machine from local hard drive to external HD

Post by Schaffstein »

Background:
I use VB on my laptop and have numerous machines for projects with engneering software.
I want to keep only the current project VM on my laptop SSD (for speed and disc space reasons) and keep the other ones accessible on an external USB drive .
So I attach 5TB external HD to the laptop and create a "machines" folder.

I use the "move" command in the GUI (right-click on the VM) and can select slect basically any drive and folder and pont it to my external HD machine folder.

However the results are mixed and the feature is not working.

A folder for the machine is created but only the VM vbox file and the log folder is moved to the destination. The VDI and snapshot folder remain on Original location :cry:

If I move the VM on the same internal HD drive letter to another location it seems to work better and shifts also the VDI and snapshots.

I don't get it because I belive what I am trying to achieve is exactly what this move feature is meant to be. Moving complete VM (vbox file, VDI file and of course the snapshots and log subfolder to a new location.
I tried the same with network folders and NAS. Same disappointing result.

Is this a bug or do I use it wrongly?
How comes it seems to (mostly) work on the same drive letter but not even reliable on the same hard drive or an external drive?
ctxnop
Posts: 2
Joined: 7. Apr 2021, 14:19
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: gnu/linux

Re: VB Manager GUI move machine from local hard drive to external HD

Post by ctxnop »

Seems normal to me. The virtual machine is the vbox file, not the vdi.
The VDI is a disk image. It means that you can "plug" it to any virtual machine, but not twice at the same time.
Exactly the same way as you can plug your external drive to any machine, but you can't plug it to two machines at the same time.
So what you are looking for is the "move" option from the "Virtual Media Manager" (you can find it under the "file")
Schaffstein
Posts: 13
Joined: 5. Mar 2018, 14:33

Re: VB Manager GUI move machine from local hard drive to external HD

Post by Schaffstein »

ctxnop wrote:Seems normal to me. The virtual machine is the vbox file, not the vdi.
The VDI is a disk image. It means that you can "plug" it to any virtual machine, but not twice at the same time.
Exactly the same way as you can plug your external drive to any machine, but you can't plug it to two machines at the same time.
So what you are looking for is the "move" option from the "Virtual Media Manager" (you can find it under the "file")
Thanks for the reply!
I am fully aware of the VM structure. My question is not regarding the connection betwenn the the VM and connected VDI.
My problem is that I want to shift a VM (with it's VDI) which all reside in a folder (.vbox, .VDI, the Snapshot and log subfolders) and move it to another location either on my laptop or over the network to another machine. Reason behind it is that I work with many VM and I can't have all of them in my laptops SSD at the same time. I wanted to use the "move" feature from the VB GUI to move a compete VM (including its VDI, so basically the folder VM folder) to an external hard drive and keep those VM that I don't need immediately or only for a quick test on another drive and easily move them between my internal SSD and an external drive. The GUI behaves inconsistent when it comes to applying the command on the same (internal) drive or on an external USB drive or a network drive. It doesn't make sense to use the "move" command when it only moves the VM definition and leaves the VDI in the old location or even worse when it only partially moves the files leaving some in the old location and some in then new location.
What I figured out is that apparently due to the way the move is implemented in the GUI it works (almost(!!) all the time) within the local drive because only the path informations are updated on the hard drive file system and files are not physically moved (copied and then deleted from old location). By selecting an external drive for the move command it works "partially" but mostly some files are not properly moved.

So to me this is bug because the move command doesn't have any limitations on destination for the VM!
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