Unable to create a backup of the VM

[Leloup78]

Bonjour,

The goal: to back up a VM from one disk to another.
Method: Copy and paste the VM directory with caja.
Note: This only doesn't work for this VM.
Error message: “Input/output error”
Change in method:
rsync --progress -h -a /path/of/source/VM /destination/
cp ...
tar -czvf /path/of/source/VM /destination/
tar -csf /path/of/source/VM /destination/ (uncompressed)
clone VM
In order to check: sha256sum give too the error message: “Input/output error”
When using the tar method, the copy seems to have succeeded, but when I open the VM, I get “end kernel panic...” These messages aren't very clear to me...

screenshots.png (231.77 KiB) Viewed 6861 times

I thought I read somewhere that you could repair the VM to fix the I/O error, but if I mess up the original VM, I’ll be left with nothing...

Do you have any idea to solve this issue?

Regards,
Leloup

[Galactic]

If you are receiving "Input/output error" messages while trying to copy the VM folder, this is almost certainly not a VirtualBox issue. You should immediately use something like GSmartControl to check the health of your physical disk, followed by whatever diagnostics or procedures are appropriate.

Avoid file system checking or writing a lot to the disk until you know for certain that the disk is physically okay. If the disk is failing, obviously you should backup whatever data you can. Something like ddrescue can be used to clone as many sectors from a bad disk as possible. But all that is outside the scope of this forum.

[Leloup78]

Thank you very much, Galatic. You were right. The drive was defective, so I replaced it with a new one. I switched from a traditional hard drive to an SSD, and my virtual machine is now seven times faster.

Regards,
Leloup

[Leloup78]

Bonjour,

The goal: to back up a VM from one disk to another.
Method: Copy and paste the VM directory with caja.
Note: This only doesn't work for this VM.
Error message: “Input/output error”
Change in method:
rsync --progress -h -a /path/of/source/VM /destination/
cp ...
tar -czvf /path/of/source/VM /destination/
tar -csf /path/of/source/VM /destination/ (uncompressed)
clone VM
In order to check: sha256sum give too the error message: “Input/output error”
When using the tar method, the copy seems to have succeeded, but when I open the VM, I get “end kernel panic...” These messages aren't very clear to me...
screenshots.png

I thought I read somewhere that you could repair the VM to fix the I/O error, but if I mess up the original VM, I’ll be left with nothing...

Do you have any idea to solve this issue?

Regards,
Leloup