Moving from full disk
Posted: 5. Nov 2013, 23:49
This question shouldn't be specific to any host or guest OS, I don't think. I have a machine with two drives: a large 500GB HDD and a 120GB SSD. Each time I make a major change I clone my SSD to the HDD first and unhook the HDD. The HDD is just a backup. That works fine. As for additional info, I'm running a Linux host (xubuntu) with a Windows 7 guest. Other than a snapshot bug that's in the works, this works great. Usually.
I messed up and when I cloned the old Windows machine to a VM I didn't resize the partition. So, the Windows guest thinks it has 500GB of space. Of course it filled up the disk entirely. To remedy this I cloned my SSD to the large HDD and will go about resizing the partition before moving it to the SSD so I don't get in trouble again. However, that doesn't so much work like I hoped.
The cloned version on my HDD argues that the disk isn't right by UUID when I launch the VM. I thought I could somehow just fix this and if I can that may save me a lot of time. However, my VHD file relies on some saves and snapshots. Since I can't clone the HDD from VB to my new drive (wish I could, but can't fine a way), I tried using the command line like so:
VBoxManage cloned /path/to/old/ssd/disk.vhd /path/to/new/hdd/disk.vhd
This clone worked and did create a new UUID, but did not bring over any of the current state info.
There is one more problem here that may be relevant. The .vbox files that target the vhd(s) are not saving due to file size. So, the last .vbox file I have is old, before I made most of my changes and snapshots. So, maybe my problem is just in the .vbox file.
My question is: How do I get the virtual machine at it's most recent state cloned to my spinning HDD from the SSD? Could I just manually copy the entire VM's folder to the HDD and somehow manually update the UUID on the vhd so it will run? Problem there is the vbox file is out of date. Can I tell it to use the last snapshot/save state?
If I need to clear anything up, please let me know.
I messed up and when I cloned the old Windows machine to a VM I didn't resize the partition. So, the Windows guest thinks it has 500GB of space. Of course it filled up the disk entirely. To remedy this I cloned my SSD to the large HDD and will go about resizing the partition before moving it to the SSD so I don't get in trouble again. However, that doesn't so much work like I hoped.
The cloned version on my HDD argues that the disk isn't right by UUID when I launch the VM. I thought I could somehow just fix this and if I can that may save me a lot of time. However, my VHD file relies on some saves and snapshots. Since I can't clone the HDD from VB to my new drive (wish I could, but can't fine a way), I tried using the command line like so:
VBoxManage cloned /path/to/old/ssd/disk.vhd /path/to/new/hdd/disk.vhd
This clone worked and did create a new UUID, but did not bring over any of the current state info.
There is one more problem here that may be relevant. The .vbox files that target the vhd(s) are not saving due to file size. So, the last .vbox file I have is old, before I made most of my changes and snapshots. So, maybe my problem is just in the .vbox file.
My question is: How do I get the virtual machine at it's most recent state cloned to my spinning HDD from the SSD? Could I just manually copy the entire VM's folder to the HDD and somehow manually update the UUID on the vhd so it will run? Problem there is the vbox file is out of date. Can I tell it to use the last snapshot/save state?
If I need to clear anything up, please let me know.