XSP files and snapshots

[mercjoe]

Hey everyone,

I've used virtualboot from shadowprotect a couple of times. By default the newly created snapshot folder is located on the C drive on the user's profile.
There were a couple of vdi files there, I guess because I've created a snapshot.

Thing is the C drive got full and I wanted to move those snapshots to the D drive (where the shadow protect files were stored) but
then I got errors about virtualbox not being able to find the vdi files. I tried to change the snapshots dir under settings to the new location but it would always go
back to the C location.


Any help on how to succesfully move this snapshot files ? and what exactly are XSP files for ?

Thanks for any help
D.

[mercjoe]

Any help anyone ?

[mpack]

As far as I know, XSP files are not associated with VirtualBox. The primary VBox file extensions are .xml, .vbox, .vdi, .sav. The ".vdi" is the native virtual disk image, but it can also use disk images from other sources: .vmdk, .vhd, .hdd, .iso, .img etc. XSP is none of these, and you say that this is inside the VB snapshots folder? Curious.

Anyway, moving a snapshot after it has been created is difficult. Changing the snapshots folder will only affect future snapshots. The only relatively easy method I know is to use "VBoxManage clonehd" to clone the most recent snapshot, this creates a flattened VDI which represents a merged version of the virtual hard disk for the VM. You locate the new VDI on the other drive and create a new VM around it.

And: if you care about disk space I would give snapshots a miss in future. Yes, they start off small, but they have a tendency to get a lot bigger - and quickly.

[grnxnm]

Hey everyone,

I've used virtualboot from shadowprotect a couple of times. By default the newly created snapshot folder is located on the C drive on the user's profile.
There were a couple of vdi files there, I guess because I've created a snapshot.

Thing is the C drive got full and I wanted to move those snapshots to the D drive (where the shadow protect files were stored) but
then I got errors about virtualbox not being able to find the vdi files. I tried to change the snapshots dir under settings to the new location but it would always go
back to the C location.


Any help on how to succesfully move this snapshot files ? and what exactly are XSP files for ?

Thanks for any help
D.

See this post for more information on .XSP files.

I agree with previous poster that moving the snapshots will be tricky. When you are using VirtualBoot to instantly boot a ShadowProtect backup image as a VirtualBox VM, all of the writes for the VM are saved to the VirtualBox-native .vdi file (the snapshot named "VirtualBoot"). By default this snapshot .vdi file will be created in the directory specified by VirtualBox's configuration settings. You will need to alter that VirtualBox setting, but it will be tricky to then move the existing snapshots elsewhere.

[Steve'sTips]

Hello MercJoe,

Are you currently backing up your VM with ShadowProtect? If so, the easiest solution would be simply to create a new VM on your D: drive using those backups. VirtualBoot was designed to allow easy virtualization of your ShadowProtect backup chain for both your original metal-based machine and your VirtualBox VM. Hopefully you have the backups of your VM and can easily recreate a copy.

If not, then let me answer a few questions I saw while reading through this dialogue before I offer a recommendation.

1) XSP files are those files which contain information about your ShadowProtect backups. They can be manually added to VM's as managed hard disks from within the VirtualBoot Media Manager GUI. VDI files (Virtual Disk Images) are those files VirtualBoot creates automatically as a snapshot of the entire VM. These VDI files can also be created manually using VirtualBoot's own snapshot feature.

2) The VirtualBoot application can create VM's either automatically or manually. Creating a VM automatically allows VirtualBoot to pull from your backup chain a specific restore point and create the VM and load it into VirtualBox. This process uses the StorageCraft Hardware Independent Recovery (HIR) code to modify your original restore point image to fit your VM hardware profile. You can also create the VM manually. Creating the VM manually will allow a wide range of configurable options to fit your specific needs.

Either way, if you use VirtualBoot to create the VM then the XSP and VDI files associated with this VM are linked directly to the VM during the creation process. You won't be able to move the VDI's to another location; however, you can recreate the VM in a new location and recreate the associated VDI's there as well. I would recommend you recreate your VM on your D: drive using either a backup from your current VM or from your original machine.

Best regards,
Steven