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 »

CloneVDI isn't copying the file, it's creating a new file with the same content, rearranged for efficiency. If you think you can create a streaming DMA copy algorithm that can do that, then be my guest!

And incidentally, the speed certainly does change with the hardware. I recently replaced my standard consumer grade hdd with a faster pro model, and the throughput doubled, from 25MB/s to 50MB/s when that drive was both source and dest. But, if either source or dest drive is especially slow (e.g. USB) then of course that will dominate the timing. The software is optimized for the scenario where the source and dest drives are the same: if memory serves it will read ahead around 16MB into a buffer before turning the I/O direction around. Testing done at the time told me that the law of diminishing returns applied heavily beyond that point.
kthxbai2u
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Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by kthxbai2u »

@OP: I am proud to report that you can now claim Linux support.

To linux users:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wine
and then just right click the application's EXE, select to run with other appplication, then find and select "Wine". Then browse to your .vdi location (i.e. /root/VirtualBox VMs/myvm/myvm.vdi) and increase size :D


Nice program, very useful. You should make a paid version, or at least make it ad supported.
mpack
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Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by mpack »

Well thank you, but I've known for quite some time that the tool works under Wine on Linux and OS X hosts! :) It's mentioned in the release notes, and I've had a CloneVDI sticky topic in the "Linux Hosts" forum here since 2009.
kthxbai2u
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Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by kthxbai2u »

mpack wrote:Well thank you, but I've known for quite some time that the tool works under Wine on Linux and OS X hosts! It's mentioned in the release notes, and I've had a CloneVDI sticky topic in the "Linux Hosts" forum here since 2009.
Ahh... Maybe I should start RTFM-ing lol...

Muchos Gracias for the program :)
ARO
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Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by ARO »

Hello .... I came across your clonevdi tool through browsing the web .... this tool is exactly what I need ... I have tried it and it works very well .... However, I need to schedule it to run on a daily basis .... how can I do that? Noting that the GUI requires input ..... In my case the input is always the same ... so if the source code was available then it could be scheduled to run daily with the required input embedded in the code ... Is there a way to get hold of the code? thank you very much ............
mpack
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Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by mpack »

There are no scheduling features in the tool, that would be an OS concern.

I would suggest reading the release notes, especially the part about command line operation, and then consider scheduling a script or batch file.
eMaX
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Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by eMaX »

mpack,

thanks for that awesome tool. Running under wine as no problem at all. It saves just an enormous amount of time. Before I found your tool, I was e.g. trying to reduce the size of a Windows 7 64bit VM down from 58 GB. The allowed size was 159 GB. I first tried nullfile, which took forever and did not help. At one point I noticed that probably due to some mistake I had made, it actually was trying to write a huge file on my host system. I ended up finding a 500 GB or so file. Nice. Next, I tried sdelete -c, and then vboxmanage -compact, which ended up giving me a file that had gone up to its maximum size, i.e., 159 GB. That option, too, take several hours and, of course, did not help at all.

Then enter CloneVDI. apt-get install wine, then go to the folder which holds the disk file, choose it, and go. Just for fun, I ran it on the 159 GB file, later also on the original 59 GB file - which made no difference really. So with your tool, I could collapse 159 GB into 36 GB in under 5 minutes:
CloneVDI.png
CloneVDI.png (123.1 KiB) Viewed 36458 times
A.W.E.S.O.M.E!

Thanks!

M
mpack
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Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by mpack »

That's an mightily impressive throughput figure you have there. I assume this was actually a rerun (the file was still in the cache) so you could grab the screenshot. :)
eMaX
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Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by eMaX »

Nah - it's a massively impressive server :-)
jazcyk
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Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by jazcyk »

Alone the option to generate a new UUID is very useful for me. I think you should find some way to publish this tool a more visible place (github?).
mpack
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Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by mpack »

jazcyk wrote:Alone the option to generate a new UUID is very useful for me.
Generating a new UUID is actually the default in both CloneVDI and VBoxManage. It's the "Keep UUID" option which is unusual, and is required to allow in-situ compaction etc.
jazcyk
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Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by jazcyk »

Yes .. but vboxmanage is not a GUI tool.
mpack
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Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by mpack »

Or, you can use the VirtualBox GUI to clone disks. Same thing really.
jazcyk
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Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by jazcyk »

OK .. should have checked what options the menu's have ;.)
CAD bloke
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Re: CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

Post by CAD bloke »

Unscientific test CloneVDI vs sdelete -z and then running VboxManage.exe" modifyhd myVM.vdi --compact
Before:   61, 438, 976 KB
CloneVDI: 53, 409, 572 KB
Tedious:  52, 995, 072 KB
For me, not enough difference to warrant running sdelete and VboxManage when CloneVDI does it in one step, much faster. sdelete running in a VM also seems to hog most of the SSD's bandwidth which is annoying on the host and other VMs.

If you're hell-bent on VboxManage I wrote a batch file, posted at http://superuser.com/questions/529149/h ... 589#862589
Last edited by CAD bloke on 11. Jan 2015, 15:05, edited 1 time in total.
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