Permanently disable snapshots - How to?

[Blutarsky]

Is there a way to disable Virtualbox's Snapshots?

[noteirak]

No there isn't.

[Blutarsky]

[noteirak]

Why do you find it so surprising?
Virtualbox is not design to be limited in its feature. It's a desktop user software, where the user is supposed to be able to use the full set of features.

[Blutarsky]

Maybe I'm missing what's behind the Snapshot's nature

[Blutarsky]

I have Read the manual, really I don't need snapshots! I don't need to save the state of a VM in a particular state.... Should be a setting that users can disable on demand....wastes a lot of space and takes time to be removed...

[noteirak]

Should be a setting that users can disable on demand....

What about don't use it in the first place?

[Blutarsky]

Should be a setting that users can disable on demand....

What about don't use it in the first place?

I don't!
However randomly a snapshot is created

[FrodoHobbits]

In all the years I have used VBox I have very rarely used snapshots and I definately have never seen any of my guests "Auto snapshot"

[Blutarsky]

Same here

[noteirak]

Do you have precise steps to replicate this?

[mpack]

VirtualBox never creates snapshots files automatically. If VirtualBox shows something on the snapshots tab of the VM then it means that you created a snapshot yourself, assuming only you has accessed the VM. If it shows nothing on that tab, then you don't have a snapshot, but you may have something which noobs confuse with snapshots.

Things that newbies confuse with snapshots:

1. A file with a ".sav" extension may be stored in the Snapshots folder but is not a snapshot file. It's basically a memory dump created because you suspended the VM instead of shutting it down. There is only ever one SAV file at most per VM and it doesn't grow (unless you increase the RAM size in the VM settings).
2. If you mark a drive as immutable then the main VDI for that drive is treated as read only and a difference file is created receive writes to that drive. The difference file will have a funny name like "{abc123.1234.5678.etc}.vdi" and be located in the snapshots folder though it is not a snapshot file.
3. If you create a linked clone then the VM you cloned from will have all its drives marked as immutable (see note 2 for effects), plus the clone VM will use a differencing file as its primary drive.