Move VM path out of ~/library

[Teucer]

Has anyone figured out a way to move their vm HardDisks and Machines out of their originally specified locations?

I see two places to tell Vbox of new paths:
Settings-->Advanced-->Snapshot Folder
and
Preferences-->General-->Default HardDisk Folder, Default Machine Folder

However...
I get the following error message from Vbox after trying to reassign the Snapshots folder path:

The snapshot folder of a machine with snapshots cannot be changed (please discard all snapshots first).

Result Code: NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
Component: Machine
Interface: IMachine {ea6fb7ea-1993-4642-b113-f29eb39e0df0}

I get this error even after emptying the Snapshots folder

Thanks,

running Vbox 2.1.0 and OS 10.5.6

[mw88]

Hi, I get the same error when doing this. I suppose this is a bug.

But I found a workaround:

Create your HD, VM and Snapshot folder wherever you want. Make a symlink for every folder to ~/Library/Virtualbox

[Teucer]

That's a nice idea.
I tried but failed. I just tried symlinking (using SymbolicLinker) to the HardDisk and I got the following error from my Windows XP guest as it booted.

FATAL: Could not read from the boot medium! System halted.

Can someone post a step-by-step guide to moving VirtualBox Machines and HardDisks (or the whole VirtualBox folder) to a new location?
There was a similar question a while back...
how to move settings to other folder -->http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic. ... ary#p58198
..but the solution was not clear enough for me to follow.

In my case, these large-sized guts of VirtualBox defaulted inside my ~/library . I have FileVault enabled and I'd rather keep my user folder as small as possible for daily back-up purposes.

Thanks.
[Crikey, replying over a year later.. Running Vbox 3.16 on OS 10.5.8]

====update 2010.04.26 ====
OK, the symlinks method did in the end work for me. Thanks!
(I had earlier mucked up the actual naming of the symlinks.)

[ChipMcK]

Preferences-->General-->Default HardDisk Folder, Default Machine Folder are global settings

Settings-->Advanced-->Snapshot Folder is a VM specific setting when the VM is defined (New).
Once you have SnapShots, this can not be changed until the SnapShots are deleted (in theory).
Even then I would be inclined to define a New VM to eliminate any confusion.