virtualbox.org

To make a long story short, I ended up getting a second hard disk in my machine, and I moved the snapshots and (I thought) the original VDI, but it turns out that the original VDI still resided on my original hard drive. I recently had it fail and could not recover the VDI, so now all I have is the snapshot.

Now, the snapshot I've had for a long, long time--so basically all data written at any point is still there. Is there anyway to recover the data there? I understand it's a diff-based snapshot, but since everything for my changes has been written since the snapshot was taken, I would hope there would be some way to get the raw data off.

For example, if there's not an elegant solution, would it be possible to just run `strings` through the snapshot and look for data? Or is there a better way of recovering the data?

I appreciate your help!

EDIT: I'm not looking for a complete recovery, just some select pieces of work that I was actively working on.

I very much doubt you can get the data off. The base VDI would have contained the majority of the filesystem data structures created when the OS was installed, and without them the sectors in the snapshot will be impossible to navigate. Your data is gone, unless you have a backup.

If you are desperate to try something: any hex editor will let you look at the snapfile file contents, so if you can recognize by eye the data you need to find then who knows, you might get lucky, but only if the files are small.