I tried it with one machine and I have seen that after import the harddisk file is not vdi any more - got vmdk.mpack wrote:No. Export/Import has its own risks.
Although I do plain backups (which indeed helped me here - btw also update your ~/.virtualbox folder), I could not live without snapshots. Problem is that the copy operations take so much time and I need to put them on external HDs because don't have enough place on my internal HD for all the VMs.mpack wrote:On the other hand, occasionally backing up your VMs (straight copy, not export) is a good idea. This is easier if you use VirtualBox v4.0 or later and/or avoid the use of snapshots.
Restoring a snapshot on the other hand is fast.
What I did (so far only for machines without existing snapshots - don't know if it works also in those cases):
- I took notes about the machine settings (remember to note the MAC addresses of attached network interfaces) and removed them from the listed machines (only remove - not delete the files).
- Then I moved the vdi into the appropriate subfolder of the VM (because of old VirtualBox versions stored the vdi not in the vm subfolder) and deleted the old configuration files there.
- Went to File->Virtual Media Manager and removed the vdi, which now not found any more (because of old VirtualBox versions stored the vdi not in the vm subfolder).
- Then I created a new virtual machine using exactly the same settings and chose to use an existing harddisk (vdi) file instead of creating a new one.