vboxmanage clonehd on split .vdi files?

[Sn0wstorm]

Hi All,

I'm having a little trouble here that hopefully someone will be able to assist with. I am trying to convert a part split .vdi file (i.e. abc.vdi, abc_Part 2 vdi, abc_Part 3.vdi) into a formatted raw .img file. I have had success using the following commands where there is a single .vdi (no parts) as follows:

vboxmanage cloned --format RAW "abc.vdi" "abc.img"

and that works fine, but I'm assuming on a split vdi it is getting to the end of thevdi specified but then it doesn't know to go onto part 2 and then crashing as I am getting error as:

0%...
Process State: VBOX_E_FILE_ERROR
Vboxmanage.exe: error: failed to clone medium
abc.vdi (VERR_VD_READ_OUT_OF_RANGE)

anyway I can fix this, or at least convert the multiple part vdi into a single as maybe i will have more luck converting then. Thanks in advance!

[socratis]

convert the multiple part vdi

I'm not quite sure what's going on here, since VDIs do not support the split2G variant. Are you sure they're VDIs? How did you obtain/get them?

[mpack]

I can confirm that there never has been any such thing as a split VDI format.

[Sn0wstorm]

They are part of my Android emulation software (BlueStacks) so even though the .vdi files were not created with VirtualBox, like I mentioned I have had success in using vboxmanage to convert previously when they were not split in parts. I'm guessing this is not something that can resolved as mpack stated split vdi's have never been a thing for this software. Weird. I'm not quite sure where to go from here.

[mpack]

If they are genuinely just linear fragments from one file, then any free split/merge transport tool can be used to join them up.

That makes two questions: why split a VDI, and why would you want to convert it to raw?

[socratis]

If I'm not mistaken, and I'm pretty sure I am not, these different VDIs represent different virtual disks, they're not partial/segments that you can "unify". It's like trying to combine 3 physical hard drives. It's not that easy. And before you ask, no, I haven't tried it...

[mpack]

I disagree. They are not named like separate disks. They are named as if someone used a tool to manually break a VDI file into chunks.

The only other explanation I can think of is that someone has dumped the partitions from one VDI into three raw partition files (noticing the word "part" appearing in the name), and then used "convertfromraw" in a mistaken attempt to turn bare partition images into separate and complete disks. I regard this as lower likelihood.

[socratis]

I, on the other hand, don't disagree with me!

I had to go to the backups because I've deleted the VMs, but compare the two listings of two similar Android VMs from 2015 that I used to have:

SGK-MBP2300:~ socratis$ ls -al /Volumes/Win7x32/Users/Public/VirtualBox/Machines/Android\ 4.4.4 
total 907456
drwx------@ 1 socratis  staff      16384 12 Απρ  2016 .
drwx------  1 socratis  staff      16384  6 Μαρ 00:00 ..
-rwx------  1 socratis  staff   63963136  5 Ιον  2015 Android 4.4.4-Data.vdi
-rwx------  1 socratis  staff    2097152  5 Ιον  2015 Android 4.4.4-SDCard.vdi
-rwx------@ 1 socratis  staff  398458880  5 Ιον  2015 Android 4.4.4-System.vdi
-rwx------  1 socratis  staff      15172 14 Αυγ  2015 Android 4.4.4.vbox
-rwx------  1 socratis  staff      15607 14 Αυγ  2015 Android 4.4.4.vbox-prev
drwx------  1 socratis  staff      16384 14 Αυγ  2015 Logs
drwx------  1 socratis  staff      16384 14 Αυγ  2015 Snapshots
SGK-MBP2300:~ socratis$ ls -al /Volumes/Win7x32/Users/Public/VirtualBox/Machines/AndroVM-TPApps/
total 831872
drwx------@ 1 socratis  staff      16384 12 Απρ  2016 .
drwx------  1 socratis  staff      16384  6 Μαρ 00:00 ..
-rwx------@ 1 socratis  staff  364912640 17 Μαρ  2015 AndroVM-TPApps-disk1.vdi
-rwx------  1 socratis  staff   60846080 17 Μαρ  2015 AndroVM-TPApps-disk2.vdi
-rwx------  1 socratis  staff      36864 17 Μαρ  2015 AndroVM-TPApps-disk3.vdi
-rwx------  1 socratis  staff      16530  5 Ιον  2015 AndroVM-TPApps.vbox
-rwx------  1 socratis  staff      16965  5 Ιον  2015 AndroVM-TPApps.vbox-prev
drwx------  1 socratis  staff      16384  5 Ιον  2015 Logs
drwx------  1 socratis  staff      16384  5 Ιον  2015 Snapshots
SGK-MBP2300:~ socratis$

All Android VMs that I've seen (Bluestack included, simply don't have one available anymore) have 3 VDIs; System, Data and SDcard. What you name your VDIs is up to you of course.

You can actually name them for what they are, or you can name them with a sequential number appended to them. And cause some confusion in the meantime...