virtualbox.org

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?

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.