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restoring 'removed' hard disk media?
Posted: 19. Dec 2011, 18:00
by 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
Re: restoring 'removed' hard disk media?
Posted: 19. Dec 2011, 19:54
by 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.
Re: restoring 'removed' hard disk media?
Posted: 19. Dec 2011, 20:05
by mpack
terryplatt wrote: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.
Re: restoring 'removed' hard disk media?
Posted: 19. Dec 2011, 20:11
by 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.
Re: restoring 'removed' hard disk media?
Posted: 20. Dec 2011, 16:33
by 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
Re: restoring 'removed' hard disk media?
Posted: 20. Dec 2011, 16:55
by 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.