VBoxManage clonehd - all clones unusable Version 3.0.6

[appyface]

I have searched these forums but I haven't found much in the way of troubles using 'clonehd' command in the 3.x series -- leading me to believe that I must be doing something wrong here. I've looked at the VBox manual but still have no idea what it could be. If I've missed finding what I need, please point me to those posts and/or documentation, thank you in advance.

I have several windows guests running in VBox 3.0.6 quite well (XP Home SP3, XP Pro SP3, W7 Pro) on windows host machine (XP Pro SP3). All guests are using the Guest Additions (in case knowing that, matters). Also, all hard disks are .vdi files created from scratch and only by VirtualBox 3.0.6. All are 32-bit there is no 64-bit OS in this mix.

As I'd like to be able to run different 'versions' of these guests in parallel, I searched here and found 'clonehd' command was suggested, as new UUID will be given to the clone using this command. 'Clonehd' was also suggested for making backups, which I also want to do. (NOTE: I do not use snapshots so do not have any complications I understand could be introduced by that feature.)

None of the clones I have made are usable though? I create a new VM with the exact same characteristics as the source VM of the cloned disk, and attach the cloned .vdi. The clone will not boot, giving message most often as "disk read error occurred", or sometimes "no bootable media found". I have slaved the clone .vdi to a working VM, the boot sector is intact as reported by Roadkil's Boot Builder, which also detects the disk format as NTFS (which is correct). Chkdsk however cannot access the disk claiming "unknown format". Disk properties reports either "unknown disk type' or "raw". The clones are not the same size as the source .vdi which may or may not be a factor...?

Here is my command line for the cloning:
VBoxManage.exe clonehd "d:\vbox\disks\orignal.vdi" "d:\vbox\disks\orignial_cloned.vdi"

I am getting no error messages, just "0...10...20..." etc. progress report followed by information that the command completed successfully.

Also, I have tried adding the parameters to the clonehd command (format VDI, type, etc.), and have also tried using the 'clonevdi' command. No joy.

I did find a post here that suggested just copying the .vdi using regular windows copy, and then changing the UUID with this command:
VBoxManage.exe internalcommands sethduuid "d:\vbox\disks\original_cloned.vdi"

This DOES work and I am using these copies in VBox successfully. But I would still like to find out what I am doing wrong for the clonehd and clonevdi commands. Any help or info telling me what dumb thing I'm doing, would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks and regards,
--appyface

[Perryg]

I can't really tell you why you are having problems with the clonehd but here is an alternative.
Check it out and see if it will work for you. CloneVDI Tool

[appyface]

I'm so sorry for late reply, I thought I had notification on for replies but I did not.

Thank you for this suggestion, I will try it.

Regards,
--appyface