restoring 'removed' hard disk media?

[terryplatt]

I know just enough to be dangerous...

I was trying to save some space in my VirtualBox image, so I went into Virtual Media Manager and Released and Removed (but did not delete) the .vdi underneath my main .vdi.
When I started the linux VM, it said it couldn't boot; I think it said the disk image was bad.

I restored from a snapshot from 3 months ago, but I'd like to restore what I recently Removed. Is it still possible?

I'm running VirtualBox 4.0.14 on a Windows XP SP3 host, guest is Ubuntu Linux 10.04 LTS

thanks in advance
- Terry

[stefan.becker]

Same problem as ever: Data needed and no backup?

Its time to think about a big USB disc for Backups. Does not help this, but next time. And believe me, next time is coming.

[mpack]

I restored from a snapshot from 3 months ago, but I'd like to restore what I recently Removed.

"Restore from a snapshot"? Unless by that you meant copy files back in from a real backup, then the act of reverting to a snapshot almost certainly destroyed any possibility of accessing data from after the snapshot moment. Unless of course, as Stefan says, you have a backup.

[terryplatt]

well, that's what I was afraid of.
I still need to get more space, but I'll send a separate post for that if I can't find anything.

[terryplatt]

Aha! I got back the disk that I had released & removed.
I just had to add the right .vdi file in my Snapshots directory.
(C:\Documents and Settings\<userID>\VirtualBox VMs\ubuntu linux 2.6\Snapshots )

So I now know that, as long as you don't delete a virtual disk you've removed, you can still get it back.

- Terry

[mpack]

If you think you have managed to get back to a working state then you are very lucky, but the means you took to get there will not in general be a solution. If you described your problem accurately, i.e. that you reverted to a 3 month old snapshot after removing what was the current state, then replacing the current state file after modifying the parent would do nothing useful. Each VDI has a "modify UUID" field in the header which changes every time the VDI is modified. The purpose is precisely to detect unexpected mods in a snapshot dependency chain. VirtualBox would detect that the uuidParentModify link in the child no longer matches the uuidModify field in the parent, and it would refuse to run the VM.