Where are my files locatedHi

[kaluk]

Hi I am running VB 3.1.8 on an iMac, everything has been working fine until I had a hd replacement. I have done a full restore from my backup which has been backing up everything in the past. When I now come to run VB is does not know that I had a previous version of XP running. Can anyone help me locate my missing files? It now thinks that this is a new installation and it gives me options for creating a new VM instead of showing my old one. Every other application and its associated data has been restored correctly. Only VB is not working . Backups have normally been done on a Time Capsule which is set to backup everything. I also have a HD from the past where I manually copied everything off the mac onto the hd so I can also look back to that hd if necessary.

Many thanks

[mpack]

VM's will normally be stored in <userdata>/.VirtualBox/Machines/, one folder per VM, each VM folder containing the VM settings xml, logs and snapshots. There is a separate folder <userdata>/.VirtualBox/Harddisks/ which contains the base VDI files.

Note that if you are logged in as a different user then a different <userdata> path will be used and might be why you don't see any VMs.

[kaluk]

Thanks for the quick response, I have looked for the folder structure both on my time machine backups and the full backup copy i made to a hd. I cannot find any folder structure that resembles what you have mentioned. Is their a specific filename I can search for in case it was installed in a different directory. I don't recall choosing anything other than the defaults when I first installed vb. I do note that I have both the 4.1.8 and 3.1.8 installers in my download directory. However when I launch the version that is installed in my application folder it reports 3.1.8. I have access to all the different user directories under the full backup and cannot see the folders anywhere.

[mpack]

The global settings file "VirtualBox.xml" would have been located in the "<userdoc>/.VirtualBox" folder.

[kaluk]

I cannot find this file either on the time machine backups that have a one year history or on the full system backup I made late last year.

[rpmurray]

On a Mac the VM files and settings are usually stored in <hard drive>/Users/<your account>/Library/VirtualBox.

[kaluk]

Thanks for the help everyone, it is now working again!

It would appear that time machine has never backed the virtualbox folder so when my iMac drive failed and I did a restore the missing folder was not restored. To compound problems further I had time machine do another backup to a another hard drive when my time capsule failed last year. Even on this backup there is no copy of the virtualbox folder, fortunately for me I also made a folder copy to yet another hard drive at the same time and its a good job I did, this is the only device that has a copy of my virtualbox folder it is six months out of date but its better than nothing. I have asked Apple to look into why my system has not been backing up correctly, I shall post back here if I find out anything significant, but it is rather worrying that two different time machine backups , one to a time capsule that runs all of the time and a snapshot done on a portable hd both have failed to backup this folder but everything else is ok, over 500GB worth of stuff was backed and restored okay, just this one folder for some reason was excluded. I shall be monitoring my time machine to see if it now makes a backup copy.

Once again thank you all for the help.

[kaluk]

Just posting to say everything appears to be normal and the time machine backup has this time included the virtualbox folder, so is now well.

[ChipMcK]

Just posting to say everything appears to be normal and the time machine backup has this time included the virtualbox folder, so is now well.

Considering the size of a virtual disk and that same virtual disk may be split into 2GB files with each independently backed up (out of synch),
are you sure that you want to depend on time machine to maintain an accurate back-up of a moving (running) target?

[kaluk]

Thanks for your comment, now that I have a better understanding of how everything works, I have excluded the live Virtualbox folder from the time machine backup and manually copy the folder to another area as and when I want to archive it to the time capsule. I am assuming that because the copying to another folder is only done when Virtualbox is not running that the contents are all in sync and will get backuped correctly by time machine.

[rpmurray]

I am assuming that because the copying to another folder is only done when Virtualbox is not running that the contents are all in sync and will get backuped correctly by time machine.

Yes, as long as the guest VM you are backing up is not running then it should get backed up correctly.