CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Windows hosts.
mpack
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Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by mpack »

That wouldn't necessarily be workable. It's an unofficial third party tool, overlaps some functionality in VBox (for legacy reason: VBox didn't used to have those functions), governed by a less restrictive license than the VBox open sources, and it's designed for Windows (though it also runs under Wine) and built using Visual Studio, not gcc.
Larry Talley
Posts: 2
Joined: 12. Aug 2013, 18:48

Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by Larry Talley »

What level of storage integrity is indicated by CloneVDI Validation result "Ok"?

I appear to have missing or corrupted snapshots. I ran my disk out of space, then I had the bright idea of removing some snapshots to free up some space, and something went wrong. (By the way, I did at least remove the snapshots via the VirtualBox interface, I wasn't quite naive enough to just blow away the files. And if there were error messages during the process of removing snapshots they weren't dire enough to make an impression. Since I was out of disk space, there were several things failing on my PC, and, the removal of snapshots took a long time, so, I may have overlooked some messages if they didn't scream for my attention.) Now I see the message "A differencing image of snapshot {02762ca6-0f59-457c-96e6-a13e23789a4c} could not be found. Could not find an open hard disk with UUID {e48afec8-a6d8-476a-b420-909c05bab1f5}.
Result Code:
E_FAIL (0x80004005)
Component:
SnapshotMachine
Interface:
IMachine {22781af3-1c96-4126-9edf-67a020e0e858}

So I am attempting to recover. I can use CloneVDI to make a clone of any of my snapshots or base VDI drives. I get Validation result OK for any clone I make.

But I haven't been able to get any clone from the VM of my concern to mount in a Windows 7 host. (I can clone and use cloned VDIs from other VMs.) I have tried to use a clone for a boot drive, and Windows 7 fails to boot. The exact failure varies a bit depending on which snapshot or base drive I specify, but, the most common failure is an uninformative "Windows Error Recovery" and attempt to "Launch Startup Repair", which then also fails.

If I specify a good boot VDI and then include my cloned VDI as an additional drive, then Windows boots, and through Computer Management/Disk Management I can see the additional drive is present, but, the additional drive is offline. When I try to make it "Online" it fails. Depending on settings when I cloned with CloneVDI it fails because of a UID collision or it fails because it is "invalid".

I was feeling some encouragement when I saw that CloneVDI Validation was Ok, but, I am now wondering what meaning I can attach to that validation. Is there anything that CloneVDI can tell me about the health of the snapshot "chain"?

By the way, thanks much for the sophisticated tool, and for all your advice about reliance on snapshots. I wish I had read your advice earlier.

Larry
mpack
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Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by mpack »

Larry Talley wrote:What level of storage integrity is indicated by CloneVDI Validation result "Ok"?
It means that the VDI header is ok. If the VDI in question is a snapshot then it means that the snapshot chain is ok (all elements present, and all have good headers). Validation "ok" says nada about the contents of the virtual disk.

I hope you've read the release notes, and noted the parts about which snapshot file you should clone, and never mounting the clone in the original VM if it used snapshots. You shouldn't be getting a UUID collision unless you selected "Keep UUID" in the CloneVDI options - which you shouldn't be doing, in your scenario.
Royce
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Joined: 27. Jun 2013, 09:25

Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by Royce »

I had previously successfully used this tool to compact a VDI, but now when I use the compact option and start the VM with the compacted disk, I get "A disk read error occurred".

I'm running latest VBox 4.2.16.
mpack
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Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by mpack »

Not enough info, e.g. you don't mention what filesystem is on the drive, what version of CloneVDI you are using, etc. CloneVDI is a third party tool which does not use VirtualBox for anything, so ironically the one bit of info you do give, your VirtualBox version, is not relevant.

The only bug ever reported (and confirmed) related to compaction was one which arose when the first partition "slot" in the MBR was empty, but other slots were not - a rare scenario, I would guess this scenario might arise if you delete the first partition off a P2V'd drive. In any case that bug was fixed in CloneVDI v2.10.
onlineph
Posts: 4
Joined: 23. Sep 2013, 02:35

Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by onlineph »

Sent: 23. Sep 2013, 11:52
by mpack

Quick answers to your questions:

1. Enlarging the disk needs to be followed by telling the guest OS to use the new space, by running a tool called a partition manager inside the guest. Some guest OS have built in partition managers, for others there are 3rd party free tools such as "gparted". The CloneVDI release notes has a discussion of this and a download link.
2. Don't be confused by terminology. A disk only has one size. However the VM software has a choice about when to allocate host space to represent that disk. The VM can allocate the entire disk image at VM creation time - which wastes a lot of host space to hold "empty" data, or it can wait until the guest actually tries to store something in a new area of the disk, and only then allocate space for that area only. This minimizes wasted host space. Dynamic disks are the latter.

Also, 999GB is a big change from 10GB, and IMHO not a good idea when that would fill the host drive. I would have made it much smaller, say 64GB. If you want to do this you would have to re-clone the original disk, because CloneVDI doesn't allow you to shrink disks.

Regards.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support
Sent: 23. Sep 2013, 09:22
by onlineph

hi mpack,

I'm new to the forum and new VB user, and while reading about the clone vdi tool, my BV perspective is getting broader and wider. Now, I myself encountered the need to resize my VB storage, I went through the thread and read alot. However, it seems, I wasn't able to find a solution to my issued.

Initially I defined my storage as VMDK 10G Dynamic. After a month it hit 100% so I exanded the storage using your CloneVDI tool and was able to adjust it from 10GB to 999GB (I have 1TB as physical HD).

Host: Win8
Guest in VB: pfsense

my problem is that, from the VB manager it shows 999GM virtual size, and 7.88 actual size, Dynamic storage.

However, from my pfsense, it shows 100 disk full.

Questions:

Is there any tweek that I had to do from VB?

What's the difference between virtual size and actual size?

Since the storage type is Dynamic, which means auto-adjust, what does it adjust? Is it the virtual size of the actual size?

Thanks!
onlineph
Posts: 4
Joined: 23. Sep 2013, 02:35

Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by onlineph »

I am saving all the cached files in the guest OS, that's why it saves data continuously. That's why I allocated 999GB (which I think an overkill, I would have put at least 700GB.

Yeah I will try to find the where can I tell the guess OS to read the newly allocated 999GB.

Thanks alot! :wink:
MikeWilliams
Posts: 1
Joined: 12. Nov 2013, 16:11

Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by MikeWilliams »

Thanks for this brilliant tool.

As someone who has been involved with PCs since late 80s I am not averse to running command line programs, but your tool save a lot of faffing around.
I especially like the ability to re-size the partition at the same time.

Keep up the good work.

/Mike
onlineph
Posts: 4
Joined: 23. Sep 2013, 02:35

Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by onlineph »

Hi,

I used the tool and I was happy that I was now able to expand virtual disk to the capacity that I need. But I was hoping also that in next release of the apps or update it would also increase disk actual size actual size, yeah although some have re-sized the partition using gparted but really, I have not yet tried gparted.

I am not that techie enough to understand this but the maker of the clone VDI might consider creating at option to resize partition before it executes the enlarging job.

Has anyone have enlarged a .ova file of pfsense? It comes as a default 10G storage, when I run it via vbox, I selected dynamic selection hoping it would grow but it never grow. So I tried the cloneVDI, it gave me 10G to 100G, but during the actual operation of the vm, the storage is still bound for 10G capacity.
mpack
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Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by mpack »

CloneVDI already increases both the disks actual capacity and the capacity of the main partition, provided it's a supported filesystem. Details can be found in the release notes.

This is not the place to discuss pfSense. Any posts on that subject will be deleted.
Wyeknottme
Posts: 7
Joined: 23. Nov 2012, 07:23

Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by Wyeknottme »

Marvelous Tool!

The VBOX CLI tool refused to resize my VDI saying support was not implemented yet. (in VBox 4.3.6)

Your Tool was simple to use, worked with good speed, and the results appear to be all I could have hoped for.

I had a 16GB VDI for WinXP that I needed to resize to 24GB for use in the same VM on the same Host.
CloneVDI made what appears to be a perfect (albeit larger) clone of the original and I'm off and running.
I kept the old ID and FILENAME (making sure to backup my VDI first.)

Hats off to a fine tool from a wonderfully capable developer!!!

Wye
mpack
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Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by mpack »

Thanks for the positive feedback. One tip: CloneVDI never modifies your original hdd file, it always makes a copy and works on that, so in fact there was no need to make a backup of it first. However, I won't discourage anyone from being extra cautious when GBs of their data depends on it. Also, I'm sure that by "larger" you mean greater capacity, however if you did mean actual file size then ticking "Compact" would have fixed that. Some people are wary about doing too much at once. I can understand that, but CloneVDI is easily capable of doing all of it's functions in a single pass.
saberman
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Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by saberman »

>if you did mean actual file size then ticking "Compact" would have fixed that
Works great. Had a 100GB Windows 7 x64 VM. Could not shrink the partition inside of Winodows but used a combination of sdelete and CloneVBI to cut it down to 65GB.
mpack
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Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by mpack »

sdelete is only necessary if you use VBoxManage. CloneVDI doesn't need it - it's compaction is a tad more sophisticated than merely discarding zero blocks.
saberman
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Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by saberman »

Host: Windows 7 Ultimate x64
VirtualBox 4.3.6

I am trying to virtualize an old computer that dual boots Windows ME and Windows XP HE. The drive layout is:
Partition 1: C: with ME
Partition 2: Is an extended partition with three partitons in it:
Partition 2A: D: (data)
Partition 2B: E: with XP
Partition 2C: F: (data)

I created an image of the entire hard drive using OSFClone. I then used CloneVDI to create a vdi drive. I created a Windows ME machine in VirtualBox and attached the vdi drive. It won't even start the boot process. All I get is a black screen with a single underscore charater _ in the top left corner.
I tried creating an XP machine and attached the vdi drive. Same results. Then I attached an XP HE iso and booted it. Entered the repair console and logged into the Windows XP system on E: (the only choice given).

Diskpart shows four patitions. I can list the files on C:, D:, E; and F:. It does not show anything about an extended partition. This is the same thing that happens if I boot an Windows XP HE CD on the real machine.

I tried running FixMBR and it warned that the current MBR was a non standard one and rewriting the MBR could lose access. Since I had a copy of the vdi drive I let it write -- still could not boot. Tried FixBoot E: -- no luck.

Looked at the original image file and the vdi drive with CloneVDI's sector viewer and they appear to have the same information in the MBR. Looked at the partions. CloneVDI only sees two partions -- the primary one with ME and the extended partition. It does not see the -- or at least doesn't show the contents of the extended partion.

When the real machine boots I get a boot menu the shows XP and ME with XP the first one and the default. I don't get as far as the boot menu in VirtualBox.

Am I missing an option that needs to be turned on in CloneVDI or do I need to use another tool to convert the image file into a vdi drive?
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