Cloning windows guest to a new VM on a new distro

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Linux hosts.
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tony35
Posts: 1
Joined: 5. Apr 2021, 14:53

Cloning windows guest to a new VM on a new distro

Post by tony35 »

Hello everyone, I'm quite new to virtualization and VMs.

Few days ago, my Linux distro brokes after trying to configure something and now I can't access the desktop environment at all (I can access all my files and terminal based program through tty though). I've tried to ask for solutions and all of the solution said that I broke it too badly that reinstalling is easier. So now here's the problem, I got a Windows 10 VM in there that I've activated the license on. I can buy another license but there's my work files in there and I haven't back it up yet.

So is there's a way to clone the .vdi in the exact way that it'll not delete any of my files on the new, reinstalled Linux. I'm intending to use a new kind of distro but all of the hardware is the same, well maybe the network will change since I don't use static ip.
scottgus1
Site Moderator
Posts: 20945
Joined: 30. Dec 2009, 20:14
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows, Linux

Re: Cloning windows guest to a new VM on a new distro

Post by scottgus1 »

Don't clone. Clone will break the activation.

Just file-copy the VM folder with all the files therein * to another drive. For safety's sake, copy to 2 drives, and file-compare the copies to the original to confirm the copies. Then have at the original host OS.

* some folks put the VM's disk file in another folder. If you did this you need that file too. The optimum format of a VM consists of a folder containing the .vbox file, the disk file, the Snapshots and Logs folders.
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