[Solved] Virtual Machine Not Working After HDD Change

[bilyo]

How disappointing! I'll probably never have a good reason to make one of those "lovely things" .

Again. I thank you very much. Probably one of the most helpful forum exchanges I've ever had.

[socratis]

I thank you very much.

You're welcome!

Probably one of the most helpful forum exchanges I've ever had.

Tell that to the haters out there!

I'll probably never have a good reason to make one of those "lovely things" .

Never say never. You'll find yourself using all the tools available at some point. The key is to really understand what's going under the hood. And test your understanding in a throw-away VM, be it a new one or a clone of an existing one. I've seen cases where people misunderstood the encryption options and ended up with a VM that was full of encrypted data, and no way to recover (that's the idea). And as you might have guessed already, with no viable backup...

I know people, power users, that even the mention of the word "snapshot" makes them cringe. And for a good reason, you're doubling/tripling/quadrupling/etc your chances of something going wrong, if you're dealing with 2, 3, 4, etc. multiple files that are stacked on top of each other.

I on the other hand keep a single, minimal snapshot in each and every VM that I have, mainly for "Undo" purposes. For example, once a VM is created (not installed, just created), I create a "NotInstalled" snapshot, just to have the settings set on stone. I then install the OS in the VM. If I don't make a mistake, and after I've installed a basic skeleton, I create a new snapshot "BasicInstall" and delete the "NotInstalled" one. Finally, apply the latest patches, install a couple of basic/standard options (Greek keyboard/layout/language support, system monitors, development tools, guest additions), and if I'm happy with the result and nothing breaks, I take another snapshot (example: "5.2.18-2018.10.16") showing both the VirtualBox version and the date. And I delete the "BasicInstall" snapshot. And after that, test at will, I don't care if it breaks or not. And my backup contains the "version-date" main VDI and VBOX, not the snapshots, I don't care about them...

That's why for example my Win10-32 VM is at version 1511 (10586.753 November Update) and has a single snapshot named "5.1.26-2017.07.28". And yes, I opted not to upgrade Win10 as you can tell, for a variety of reasons...

[bilyo]

bilyo wrote:
Probably one of the most helpful forum exchanges I've ever had.

Tell that to the haters out there!

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Socratis is a most helpful commentator. Read and heed!

[socratis]

I'll print that and hang it on my wall!!!