Backup Windows 10 license from VM - best options?

[FloLaur]

Hello.

I have set up a clean virtual Windows 10 environment inside VirtualBox and activated it with a spare key I had laying around.
My goal is to keep this clean machine, set up snapshots, test whatever I need to test and always revert to the clean state when I need it, without needing to reactivate.
(The virtual HDD is located on a permanent, non-system partition)


With the snapshots set up I can easily achieve this.

However I am wondering, in case i reinstall VirtualBox or I need to reformat / reinstall my host OS, is there any way I can import the settings to be the same as the original VM
so that the guest system stays activated?

Do I need to backup more than the HDD / use the snapshot feature?

I would appreciate any help on this matter. Thank you in advance, and wish you all a happy new year

[scottgus1]

A copy of the shut-down (not save-stated) guest folder with all files therein, as well as the guest disk files if they are not in the guest folder, serves as a complete backup of the activated guest. You can FC file-compare the backup to confirm the copy. If the original is lost, move a copy of the backup back to the original location and the guest will be ready again. The copy can be used on a different host PC too, just by registering the guest's .vbox file. (note that if the original guest had all the guest disk files in the guest folder, the guest is completely usable on any capable host and host OS. If the disk files are outside the guest folder then the .vbox file has absolute paths to the disk files and these paths must be either reproduced on the new host or the .vbox file must be modified.)

Snapshots make a guest more delicate and do not work as backups. They are similar to Windows' System Restore points: they are point-in-past-time markers, not extractable, useless without the base system in place, but easier to corrupt because the files are accessible on the host drive. They do not store "files", like a backup folder would. Virtualbox snapshots store changed disk sectors, which may or may not contain the entire file. They should only be used on guests you're experimenting with and with data you wouldn't mind losing. (The forums are replete with users destroying their important data because they did something wrong with a snapshot.)

Additionally, each snapshot, if used long enough, has the potential to grow to the final size of the original drive, and will not shrink once another snapshot is taken. The guest's total data size on the host could be many times what it would have been without the snapshots, and with tremendous amounts of dead data that will never be used or changed.