CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

[netserver]

hi mpack

first many many many thanks this tooll !!!!!!!

and second

I'm trying to compress an image of 2TB. and I have the following error ...

The physical device is a RAID5 with 3.5TB 3ware 9500S

https://picasaweb.google.com/jorfeferna ... 2792161858

all ok now i use --compact from vb tools and now ok


many thanks

[mpack]

What do you mean by the "physical device" - you mean that's the drive the VDI file is stored on? If so then that shouldn't matter.

As far as I know, this "block map corrupted" error message means what it says: it means that the block map (the list of offsets to every 1MB block in the drive image) is not consistent with the drive image file. For example, it may reference blocks beyond the end of the file (indicating perhaps that the file has been truncated). More unusually it could indicate that several entries reference the same block, which would indicated outright corruption.

Does VirtualBox accept this particular VDI file as being legitimate? (note that particular file, not other copies).

[Skalek]

From what I understand I can use CloneVDI to clone a flattened snapshot VDI that I can then mount in another machine or use as a backup.

I can do multiple snapshots in a day and was wondering how do I go about matching the snapshot file to a particular snapshot name?

[mpack]

From what I understand I can use CloneVDI to clone a flattened snapshot VDI that I can then mount in another machine or use as a backup.

That feature currently only works for v3 users, or all users only if they use the CloneVDI_Media.xml feature. This is because collating information about the multiple files involves searching the media registry, the location of which moved in v4. An alternative method of merging a snapshot chain is to use "VBoxManage clonehd" on your selected snapshot file.

I can do multiple snapshots in a day and was wondering how do I go about matching the snapshot file to a particular snapshot name?

Any of several ways. Creation date is what I look for, or the GUI tells you what the UUID of each file is. The file itself is called {UUID}.vdi.

[mpack]

Copy of a message from another thread which I considered ought to be preserved here...

A few notes on getting CloneVDI to go to work on the Mac:

• I did this on a MacBook Pro running [OS X] 10.5.8 with the latest security patches, VirtualBox 4.0.4 r70112 and a Win7 pre-SP1 VM.
• WineBottler is 1.1.44. However, the version of Wine that comes in its .dmg is also 1.1.44, so I upgraded to the latest 1.2.2 before proceeding.
• Unpacked CloneVDI 2.03 and placed the subdirectory (containing the executable and the .bat, .xml, .ini files) in my Applications folder
• Started WineBottler, selected Create Custom Prefixes.
• With the select File... button chose the CloneVDI.exe executable.
• Ticked the Copy only checkbox underneath the Install File textbox.
• prefix template was left to the default new prefix, all other options were left blank or to default values.
• Clicked Install, chose to place the CloneVDI.app together with all the stuff in its folder, let WineBottler do its stuff.
• New icon popped up, double click to run CloneVDI from MacOS from now on. Note that this will cause X11 to launch since it uses that as the graphic platform.

[UncleBoarder]

"Reads physical drives" - Am I doing something wrong? It only allows me to "Proceed" if I put a .vdi in the source. How do I get it to read my physical Drive C: as the source so I can turn it into a .vdi?

[mpack]

As I said in the other thread, you need to put "\\.\PhysicalDrive0" in the source field. You do however need to "Run as administrator" on at least some Windows installations. In some cases the latter is necessary even when your normal account allegedly has admin privileges. I've just tested this on a Win7 host with CloneVDI v2.03 (the current release), so I know it works.

[premier69]

Kudos my man! The process went almost problem free. After cloning to a larger drive size i started virtualbox manager and the virtual machine, it had the progress bar and nothing happened so i pressed the title bar close button and it had to force close both it and the virtualbox manager. it would then not start again untill i rebooted my host pc and after that everything worked perfectly.

win7x64sp1 and latest virtualbox.

[wallypiper]

Great tool. I was totally intimidated by the command line instructions. Just using VBox is pretty intimidating. But cloning a squeaky clean XP installation was exactly what I wanted to do and your tool made it soooo easy.

One comment. In the readme section on "how to use the clone" you say to go to the vbox file menu to register the new vdi with vbox. That option is no longer present in VBox 4. You have to add the new vdi in the storage section of an existing virtual machine. Once you do that you can select it as the hard drive for a new machine. Then, if you're anal about such things like me, you can go back and remove it from the "donor" machine. At least that's how I got around it.

So far, this is a great solution to do exactly what I needed to do.

Thanks for the hard work.

[mpack]

Yes, the release notes need to be updated for v4 - though I need to be careful, and not assume that everyone uses v4. CloneVDI is separate and not necessarily wedded to a particular VBox version.

You should just have able to create a new VM, and when you got to the drive creation part you would just "Use existing...", but instead of selecting a VDI from the pulldown there's a little folder icon to the right of it which allows you to select a VDI by filename. A quicker way to get what you wanted, but the end result is the same.

[AIM54]

I used it today and I am good work

Pleased to be of service!

hi mpak, just used the tool you created and it works fine Thank you for making the virtual world a better place for everyone

[mpack]

Thanks, you are welcome.

[scottgus1]

THANK YOU MPACK!

Great tool! My SBS2003 server vdi expanded from 28GB to 37GB after just one defragment. CloneVDI brought it back down to 27GB. Another VM we use went from 18GB to 7GB. Both VM's are back up and running flawlessly. Will run this on the data disk for our virtual server next weekend.

Thanks again!!

[mpack]

Your're welcome. Defragment and surface scan - both are things that people try now and then, and both can cause huge expansion of a dynamic drive. Of course surface scan is pointless in a virtual disk, but an occasional defragment is useful.

ps. a warning to anyone reading this who is using snapshots: don't defragment. You will see an ever bigger expansion in disk space of the current state, and you can't compact to get rid of it, at least not without abandoning the use snapshots.

[scottgus1]

Mpack, I rand CloneVDI on the SBS2003's data vdi, and it dropped from 220GB to 99GB. Excellent! But I did notice that 2003's "Previous Versions" system got hosed after the cloning/shrinking. Pre-clone entries were inaccessible, only new runs of "Previous Versions" were good. Not a deal-breaker, but interesting. The OS recommended a CHKDSK, but it didn't help. All the data is still good, though.

Ever heard of something like this?