Deleted snapshot still have present and used VDI on disk

[pedc]

Hi,

I am using 4.1.14 on Windows XP SP3 Host.

All working fine but one of the virtual machine (Win Seven) is still using a snapshot file whenever I deleted it some days ago.

Main VDI is 9GB and has not been "touch'ed" since months, snapshot is 8GB and is the file VBOX is always working on.

As VBOX interface show no snapshot since I deleted it, how do I merge this snapshot with main VDI and only work on main VDI again ?

regards.

[mpack]

Trying cloning the VM. When asked, tell it to clone the current state only (i.e. do not preserve the snapshot structure). The Win7 clone may want to be reactivated.

[pedc]

I tried it but only options are Full clone (that say it keep all files including snapshot) or Linked clone (that point to original files).

It do not propose any "Current state" option.

[mpack]

Choose full clone. The question about current state comes later, but only if it thinks there are any snapshots involved. In any case full clone will do what you want.

[pedc]

OK done !

The 9GB main VDI + 8GB Snapshot VDI has been cloned into one single 10GB main VDI (whithout asking any question about the snapshot).

But isn't it a bug ? why VBOX after snapshot deletion did not physically delete the snapshot file and continued working on it whenever it show that there is no more snapshot in GUI console ?

Thank you.

[mpack]

But isn't it a bug ? why VBOX after snapshot deletion did not physically delete the snapshot file and continued working on it whenever it show that there is no more snapshot in GUI console ?

English is obviously not your first language (though no doubt it is infinitely better than my - whatever the alternative might be), so I was not able to fully understand your description of the problem; and without being at your computer to check for myself, I can't confirm any bug. If lots of other users are not reporting it then a bug seems unlikely. You could simply be misunderstanding normal behaviour, e.g. that a current state file must always exist.

[pedc]

Indeed I am French native but try to do my best writing english

If I look at all my other VM's there is one "main" VDI and a "snapshot" (if I ever decided to create one) and usually if I delete the snapshot, then the snapshot VDI file is physically deleted or reduced to a few KBytes VDI file size.

For this specific VM, after snapshot deletion the snapshot dissapeared from "snapshot" VBOX GUI panel interface "as usual", but when I went into snapshot folder I saw that the snapshot file was still present (a hudge 8GB VDI file). When I restarted the VM I saw that the snapshot file was still used as if I did not delete it and in fact I saw that the snapshot file continued to "live" groing it's size leaving the main VDI on its original state.

So whenever I deleted snapshot VBOX, VBOX continued to act as if I has not been deleted.

I hope I explained better.

[mpack]

If I look at all my other VM's there is one "main" VDI and a "snapshot" (if I ever decided to create one)

No, the "main VDI" is in fact the snapshot (snapshot: informal English: a moment, frozen in time), the child is the current state (not frozen). If you discard the current state then a new one will be created, because the snapshot is frozen and must not be modified. This is what I meant by saying that perhaps you were misunderstanding standard behaviour.

[pedc]

OK my mistake for bad use of snapshot term, I used it because of the "snapshot" folder name that storethe GUI'ed VDI files.

But after deleting a snapshot then the VDI file inside "snapshot" folder should dissapear or be reduced to a few KB sized file isn't it ? this is what happend with the other VMs I have.

[mpack]

Yes, if you delete a snapshot or a current state then one would expect the corresponding disk file to disappear and perhaps be replaced with a much smaller file. As I said before, I don't fully understand the problem you have described, but my guess is that, at some time in the past, VirtualBox has crashed leaving a mismatch between the control file (.xml or .vbox) and the files in the folder.

[pedc]

This is exactly what happend, I have a VM on which I deleted the snapshot, VBOX GUI interface show me that there is no more snapshot, only "current state" is visible, but physically I still have both VDI one named Seven.vdi (9GB) and the other one inside /snapshot/{xxxx}.vdi (8GB).

VBOX should have deleted (or shrinked to a few bytes) the {xxx}.vdi file.