Deleting old snapshots

[ReyJavikVI]

Since I've been doing a lot of complicated stuff in a VM, I took a lot of snapshots. But I no longer need the older ones, because I didn't make any mistakes so they weren't necessary. How do I delete them?

EDIT: Another question: Can I revert to a previous snapshot but keep a backup of the current state? Suppose I make a snapshot before installing a program. The program doens't work right, and I think reinstalling it may be a solution. I'd have to load the previous snapshot, but I want to keep the current state of the VM saved.

[ReyJavikVI]

Anybody?

[Perryg]

Since I've been doing a lot of complicated stuff in a VM, I took a lot of snapshots. But I no longer need the older ones, because I didn't make any mistakes so they weren't necessary. How do I delete them?

EDIT: Another question: Can I revert to a previous snapshot but keep a backup of the current state? Suppose I make a snapshot before installing a program. The program doens't work right, and I think reinstalling it may be a solution. I'd have to load the previous snapshot, but I want to keep the current state of the VM saved.

The first thing I would do to preserve what you have is to export the good working VM. Since this will not include the snapshots you will have a good working final version and can import it again if something goes wrong or simply use it for the final version. Deleting the old snapshots are doable, saving them and using them again are not.

[ReyJavikVI]

If I delete old snapshots, I don't want to revert back to them. How do I delete them?

And thanks for the other answer.

[Perryg]

Because this is a very confusing area you should read section 3.4.4. Snapshots of the Users Guide to make sure that you understand it. This can not be undone and can (if not done correctly) kill your VM (the reason to export it so you have a known good copy). What I do is to click on one and then right click and select discard, now be sure and click on the snapshot only. I know it says that it will merge them which makes no sense to me but if you think about it the current state is really a copy of all of them. At least that is the way they explained it me.

[alukin]

Only HD image file is really matters. You can even delete entire virtual machine if you do not like it. It is safe. Deleting snapshot does not affect guest
OS disk. If your guest OS is so weak that it can not survive "reset" button, you can get some problems with deleting snapshot. But most OS'es are aware of front-panel reset button and can survive in such crude environments.