Cloning .vdi

[rhoadsb]

I have been using Virtual Box 2.1.4 for a few months on an administrative account, and decided that I wanted to make the Ubuntu guest a public OS so I could access it from a non-administrative account. I used Windows to copy the .Virtual Box from the C:\Users\Admin to C:\users\Public. In the non-administrative account (Guest) I opened up VBox, set up a new OS and told it to boot off of the .vdi in Public. Some of the data was still intact, while some of the data wasn't available. All installed programs were also gone. How do I fix this and or recover my installed programs?

[Perryg]

First thing I would suggest is that you put everything back like it was and see if you can get it all work again.

• Then I would consider installing VBox 2.2.2 so you can use the export function to be able to retain a good copy of the VDI with all programs intact.
• After that you can uninstall VBox and then install it again to the new location.
• After that you can import to the new install.

Please read the VirtualBox Users Guide and get comfortable with everything before you start such an endeavor.

[rhoadsb]

Sorry about the lateness of this reply.

I did put everything back, and the data is still missing. I guess I'll give Vbox 2.2.2 a shot.

[rhoadsb]

I think the solution to my problem is a symbolic link, this worked for a guy on a Mac http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=692, Vista has the capabilities to do this through mklink, however I can't get VirtualBox.xml to link to VirtualBox.xml since the names are the same.

Any help would be appreciated.

[rhoadsb]

The solution I found only works on Windows Vista because it has the mklink command. I copied the Virtual Box data into C:\users\public and then renamed the VirtualBox.xml file in my Guest user to VirtualBox2.xml. I then used mklink to link the files:

mklink C:\users\guest\.virtualbox\VirtualBox.xml C:\users\public\.virtualbox\VirtualBox.xml

I did the same on the administrative account and they both use the same .vdi with the settings. My data wasn't recovered from the hard drive though, I guess you win some and lose some.