virtualbox.org

Hello Everybody

Thanks a lot for your contributions . The size (on the host) of the vdi being over 20 Gb, I will try to run clonevdi in PlayOnMac, thanks for the tip. In the past i tried the old method: defragmentation+sdelete, but i had to stop it in emergency: indeed the dynamic image size became larger and larger during the process and my hdd on the host was nearly full...

I still have a question (unrelated), if i remember well, clonevdi has a fonctionnality which allows to keep the old UUID on the new vdi. I clearly understand that it's not possible to have two virtual hard drive with the same UUID attached to the same VM, but was wondering in which case should i use the option to keep or not to keep the old vdi uuid.

Thanks again.

Cheers

Jeff_59

Yes, CloneVDI allows you to keep the old UUID or create a new one. The correct setting depends on why you want the clone. If the compacted clone is to be plugged back into the same VM the original came from then the recommendation is to keep the old UUID. Otherwise you can change the UUID.

There is a discussion of this and other things in the release notes.

mpack wrote:If the compacted clone is to replace the original in the same VM, then the recommendation is to keep the old UUID.

This would be more correct, I think.

I have a question though. How do you determine if disk image contains unused blocks? Do you analyse the FS structure?

As I said, there is a discussion of these matters in the release notes.

Yes, thank you. I'm not used to release notes containing lengthy discussions. Overlooked that part.

Hello, i was trying to convert a VHD (2 partitions C: & D:) to a VDI with the 'Compact while copying'.

When i start the virtual machine with this drive, windows complain about the drive need and 'correct' error.

The machine start, but D: partition is empty.... Can you help me or this software cannot handle partitionned drive image ?

I assume the CloneVDI version is current? CloneVDI understands partitions just fine, and having more than one is the norm for many guest OSs. Does the clone work if you don't compact? Anyway, even if CloneVDI didn't recognize a partition, the only effect would be that the partition doesn't get compacted. There would be no data loss.

Are you sure drive D: wasn't in a different VHD?

Another possibility is that you cloned the base VHD in a snapshot chain, when you're supposed to select the most recent snapshot file.

Yes latest version, try with and without 'Compact'. At start it does not dectect correctly one partition (0xf undefined) but this is an NTFS partition.

No snapshot matter or partition in an another VHD, i had only this VHD for my VM.

But as far i can remember i think that this VHD may come from Virtual PC, but it is working well in Virtual Box.

Well, as I said above, failure to identify a partition simply means that it won't be compacted - it will be copied unchanged. So there would have to be some other reason why data is lost - this is a well tested feature of CloneVDI, so I'm quite confident that there's no bug. You seem to have ruled out the only obvious causes I can think of.

Incidentally, the source of the VHD makes no difference - a VHD is a VHD as far as CloneVDI is concerned.

I suggest that you try cloning with another tool, e.g. the "Copy" feature in the VirtualBox GUI - File|Virtual Media Manager. Then we'll see if the results are different from CloneVDI.

mpack wrote:Well, as I said above, failure to identify a partition simply means that it won't be compacted - it will be copied unchanged. So there would have to be some other reason why data is lost - this is a well tested feature of CloneVDI, so I'm quite confident that there's no bug. You seem to have ruled out the only obvious causes I can think of.

VDI created, with or without compact option is see has corrupted by windows at start.

mpack wrote:I suggest that you try cloning with another tool, e.g. the "Copy" feature in the VirtualBox GUI - File|Virtual Media Manager. Then we'll see if the results are different from CloneVDI.

I will try this as soon has possible.

Hello, used VB Copy feature to convert my VHD to VDI and no matter with D: partition...

Compacted this VDI with CloneVDI and D: partition is see has corrupted.

Ok, thanks for the info.

This tool is awesome! Thank you mpack!
I tried numerous times to compact my vdi file but failed to shrink the vdi size.
Compacting the vdi grew the file from 40 GB to 300 GB.
This awesome tool only took about 14 minutes to compact.
The vdi shrank from 300 GB to about 25 GB.

The new vdi started up beautifully.

You're welcome, thanks.

I'm wondering. How much buffering you're using? It appears the speed of copying doesn't change in regard to source and destination locations.
Copying the ~10Gb image file directly from one physical disk to another takes roughly 2 minutes for me, but with CloneVDI it is approximately 6 minutes, regardless if the destination image on same or different physical disk, or if I choose to compact the image or not.
Is this expected behavior (i.e. a fragmentation of source image affects the speed of copying), or there's a room for improvements?