Copying snapshots from vbox to vbox, when both share a .vdi

[forrest177]

Hello,

Note that cloning is not a solution to this problem. The new vbox is being created on a different system than the one that the first one was created on and both have a different CPU.

My situation is as follows: I have a VM which I configured and setup a series of important snapshots on, which I now need to access from a new system. I have the VDI and snapshots on an external HDD. When I move to a new system, I install Oracle, and create a new VM, referencing the VDI on the external HDD as the existing image to use. The VM is setup correctly, and I can start it up just fine.

The problem occurs when I attempt to reference the snapshots I setup from my VM settings. I go to Settings->Advanced while the VM is powered off, and set the snapshot directory to the location containing the snapshots on the external HDD. After I do this, the snapshots never appear in the snapshot list for the VM. Restarting VirtualBox does not solve the problem.

It might be worth noting that these 2 systems have different CPUs. Clearly the VDI file is not affected by being accessed from a different CPU than the one it was initially created on, but do the snapshot files?

Is there any way to make my set of VDI files/snapshot files portable to any system I may need to access them from, without literally creating a set of them that corresponds to every known processor?...

Any ideas?

[noteirak]

It is very simple actually, simply copy over the VM folder (everything, just copy the folder itself, not the content) and in the target system, open virtualbox > Machine > Add...
Make sure you remove the VM you created with only the VDI, or you will run into an error (trying to add 2 HDD with the same UUID).

Also, you keep mentioning the CPU - it has nothing to do with the VDI or the Snapshots. Your snapshots don't appear because you created a new VM, so the VM data file does not contains reference towards these snapshots. Simply use the original VM as-is.
Any issue you might encounter from the CPU will be the same regardless that you copy over the VM or create a new VM and link the VDI to it.