I have a virtual box image, running linux on a windows host.
I have attached 3 physical hard drives to the image (made 3 raw vmdk files referencing to the physical drives).
10 months ago I made a snapshot. After some time I recognized that the virtual machine uses more and more disk space of the host system. The issue is that any changes made on the physical drive are stored in a separated snapshot file from that time I made the snapshot.
How can I fix that? I want to persist the snapshot data to the corresponding physical hard drive.
How can I merge/copy the data from Snapshots/{56cdf3a5-9751-40bf-88e4-8254dfcfa3b2}.vmdk to my hdd/hdd1.vmdk?
Below is the hard disks definition of my virtual machine (.vbox).
For instance:
Hard disk uuid={4b241091-f8ee-460b-834f-649db62ac100} points to hdd/hdd1.vmdk which references to the physical hard drive.
Due to the snapshot any changes are stored to the snapshot file Snapshots/{56cdf3a5-9751-40bf-88e4-8254dfcfa3b2}.vmdk instead to the physical hard drive.
.vbox - HardDisks
Code: Select all
<HardDisks>
<HardDisk uuid="{f401eb5d-1f9c-42c5-81be-29472cd7b5e1}" location="OpenSuse.vdi" format="VDI" type="Normal">
<HardDisk uuid="{a7eca8af-da1b-47ab-a9db-301c08061096}" location="Snapshots/{a7eca8af-da1b-47ab-a9db-301c08061096}.vdi" format="VDI">
<HardDisk uuid="{8db439c7-b5e6-4cd3-ac65-09b92e217322}" location="Snapshots/{8db439c7-b5e6-4cd3-ac65-09b92e217322}.vdi" format="VDI"/>
</HardDisk>
</HardDisk>
<HardDisk uuid="{4b241091-f8ee-460b-834f-649db62ac100}" location="hdd/hdd1.vmdk" format="VMDK" type="Normal">
<HardDisk uuid="{56cdf3a5-9751-40bf-88e4-8254dfcfa3b2}" location="Snapshots/{56cdf3a5-9751-40bf-88e4-8254dfcfa3b2}.vmdk" format="VMDK"/>
</HardDisk>
<HardDisk uuid="{00058bb3-e0e9-4487-89c7-c46b50859f38}" location="hdd/hdd2.vmdk" format="VMDK" type="Normal">
<HardDisk uuid="{77e654cb-50b2-4536-9be3-533a45012f14}" location="Snapshots/{77e654cb-50b2-4536-9be3-533a45012f14}.vmdk" format="VMDK"/>
</HardDisk>
<HardDisk uuid="{b38696c1-c662-4de5-9b07-efcca82d76c8}" location="hdd/hdd3.vmdk" format="VMDK" type="Normal">
<HardDisk uuid="{064b6e62-074e-42e0-8a75-24ff884875b3}" location="Snapshots/{064b6e62-074e-42e0-8a75-24ff884875b3}.vmdk" format="VMDK"/>
</HardDisk>
</HardDisks>
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# Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
CID=0a18555f
parentCID=ffffffff
createType="fullDevice"
# Extent description
RW 7814037168 FLAT "\\.\PhysicalDrive0" 0
# The disk Data Base
#DDB
ddb.virtualHWVersion = "4"
ddb.adapterType="ide"
ddb.geometry.cylinders="16383"
ddb.geometry.heads="16"
ddb.geometry.sectors="63"
ddb.uuid.image="4b241091-f8ee-460b-834f-649db62ac100"
ddb.uuid.parent="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
ddb.uuid.modification="1a4036df-5a58-48a9-aa8e-6777d096a27a"
ddb.uuid.parentmodification="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
ddb.geometry.biosCylinders="1024"
ddb.geometry.biosHeads="255"
ddb.geometry.biosSectors="63"
Disk Descriptor of the Snapshots/{56cdf3a5-9751-40bf-88e4-8254dfcfa3b2}.vmdk
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^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@
# Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
CID=83376400
parentCID=ffffffff
createType="monolithicSparse"
# Extent description
RW 7814037168 SPARSE "{56cdf3a5-9751-40bf-88e4-8254dfcfa3b2}.vmdk"
# The disk Data Base
#DDB
ddb.virtualHWVersion = "4"
ddb.adapterType="ide"
ddb.geometry.cylinders="16383"
ddb.geometry.heads="16"
ddb.geometry.sectors="63"
ddb.geometry.biosCylinders="1024"
ddb.geometry.biosHeads="255"
ddb.geometry.biosSectors="63"
ddb.uuid.image="56cdf3a5-9751-40bf-88e4-8254dfcfa3b2"
ddb.uuid.parent="4b241091-f8ee-460b-834f-649db62ac100"
ddb.uuid.modification="be19e12c-84b9-4223-a64d-bf40b6cd07ed"
ddb.uuid.parentmodification="1a4036df-5a58-48a9-aa8e-6777d096a27a"
^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@... more binary data