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Hi,

I was clearing disk space and (regrettably) deleting old VMs that I no longer use. Forgetting that, there is a VM that I do use, which was based off of a clone .vdi, inside a directory I have now deleted.

Inside the clone's directory, it has it's own very large .vdi. However, it will not start because virtualbox is looking for a clone .vdi inside the directory of the original VM.
Is is possible to recover the VM with the .vdi it currently has?

Kind regards,
Dan

That looks like it wasn't really a clone, it was a so-called "linked clone", basically a snapshot but spread over two VM folders.

Quick answer: if all you have is that difference image then no, the VM cannot be recovered - unless of course you have a backup of the old base VDI.

Never use snapshots or linked clones other than for short tests (and I wouldn't even use them for that). They are always a catastrophe waiting to happen.

p.s. One of the advantages of proper backups is that they can be kept in offline storage, so you wouldn't have been looking to clear disk space. Are you sure you've never made a backup of the VM folders since creating that linked clone? A single backup made in that time is all you need.

mpack wrote:That looks like it wasn't really a clone, it was a so-called "linked clone", basically a snapshot but spread over two VM folders.

Quick answer: if all you have is that difference image then no, the VM cannot be recovered - unless of course you have a backup of the old base VDI.

Never use snapshots or linked clones other than for short tests (and I wouldn't even use them for that). They are always a catastrophe waiting to happen.

That does seem like what I've done. Lesson learnt.

mpack wrote:p.s. One of the advantages of proper backups is that they can be kept in offline storage, so you wouldn't have been looking to clear disk space. Are you sure you've never made a backup of the VM folders since creating that linked clone? A single backup made in that time is all you need.

The only backup i seem to have is a .ova file. Would that work?

"keep a remote backup, Dan!". Second lesson learnt.

Thanks for your replies,
Dan

DanRalley wrote: The only backup i seem to have is a .ova file. Would that work?

An OVA is not a backup because files are modified before being copied, so you can't quite recover the original VM. For example it will have merged the base and snapshot of he original VM (when you create a linked clone both original VM and "clone" switch to using a difference image relative to a now frozen base VDI).

However an OVA may (no guarantees here) be better than nothing PROVIDED it is an export of the original VM folder. You would have to extract the vmdk file, convert it to a VDI, store the VDI in the place referenced by the error, and hope for the best.

If the OVA is an export of the later VM, i.e. the linked clone, then it should let you recreate the state of the linked clone when the export was made.