Recover data from snapshots

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dacedos
Posts: 1
Joined: 5. Nov 2010, 17:56
Primary OS: MS Windows XP
VBox Version: OSE Debian
Guest OSses: Xubuntu 9.10

Recover data from snapshots

Post by dacedos »

Hello,

I took a Snapshot a month ago and today my VM crashed,

The host is running Windows XP and the guest OS is Xubuntu 9.10.

After installing a new instance of OpenOffice in Xbuntu I have been unable to login again, there are not errors and I do not know what fails.

I have important code and proyects into my eclipse-workspace I would need to take from the snapshot that is not working anymore.

Is there any way to recover files stored into a snapshot I have took today from the snapshot I took a month ago?

thanks!
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39134
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: VirtualBox+Oracle ExtPack
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: Recover data from snapshots

Post by mpack »

You need to clone the latest snapshot file to create a single merged VDI. The file you need to clone is the file with a name like {1234.6778.etc}.vdi which is located in your VMs \snapshots folder. The correct file to clone should be the one with the most recent creation or modify time stamp.

To clone a vdi your easiest option to try is the CloneVDI GUI tool (see sticky in Windows Hosts forum). If that doesn't work then you can try the "VBoxManage clonehd" command line tool (see your VirtualBox user manual for details of that one).

If you successfully create the clone then you can create a new VM to mount it within, and you can then access the files.

I have to say: a problem logging in doesn't sound like drive corruption, it sounds like a soft (config) problem of some kind, such as user account details getting zapped - but I'm no Ubuntu expert so I won't speculate further. In any case a flat VDI clone will make it easier to try out various things to get your files back.
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