virtualbox.org

I want to move my machines off my computer onto an external drive.

I have googled a bit and people are talking about cloning and stuff.

Can i not just move the "harddisk" and change the location when I run it?

Do you have snapshots?
What version of VirtualBox and what version did you start with?

Nope,no snapshots.

Using 4.04 atm and I can't remember which one I started with, I think I possibly updated once or twice to get to this version so possible the last 3.X one

I have a VirtualBox VMs folder with 2 machines

and a .VirtualBox with another 2 machines in

That's what I was afraid of. You have a mixed home folder environment. The .VirtualBox is the old way (pre 4.0.*)
With no snapshots though it will be a lot easier.
For the new guests in the VirtualBox VMs you can move them anywhere and re-register them easy enough, but the others you need to actually create them again and attach the original *.VDI instead of creating a new HDD.
What I would suggest is to get the older ones converted to be in the VirtualBox VMs folder then you can move that folder to the new location and tell VirtualBox where it is.

What I did to convert is as follows.

• Create the folder in VirtualBox VM that you need to install the older VMs in. Make sure that you name the folder exactly what you called it before, which should also match the name of the vdi file
  Release (but do not delete) the machine in the GUI and move it to the new location.
  Create the new machine using the exact same name and using the same configuration as you did on the old one and when asked to create a new HDD or use an existing one tell VBox to use the existing one.

Test if it worked and if it does do the other one.
Once these are moved and verified working then you can move the VirtualBox VMs folder to the new location and open the preference section of VBox and tell it where the location is.
If it all goes smoothly you should be good to go. You more than likely will need to close VirtualBox and make sure that the VirtualBox svc has stopped and then start it up and see if it finds everything

Got it working cheers.

Did crap myself for a sec after I closed VirtualBox then opened it again and it was as if freshly installed

Went into the folder and just double clicked on each machine and now they're in the list

It's giving me all the first time messages though about pointer and keyboard integration

Perryg
Is this possible to do?

I want to install all VMs to a common folder that every user on my Solaris box, can access. Then I snapshot the VM, and create differencing disks for every user in their respective home folder. This should be possible to do, yes? When I install the VM, can I point out the common folder, to install to?