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Within the Virtualbox menu, there is an option of cloning a VM. Others have suggested just going to the folder where the VM resides and making a copy of it.

Is there a difference between using the cloning command and just copying the VM to another location? If there is a difference, could someone advise what is the difference. I am using the latest version of VirtualBox...sorry, I'm in the office so I can't give you the exact version number but I believe it was 4.x

vannyi wrote:Others have suggested just going to the folder where the VM resides and making a copy of it.
Is there a difference between using the cloning command and just copying the VM to another location?

The "Others" don't really understand the minute differences. If you do that, VBox will get confused. The main reason are the differences in the UUIDs of the HD and the VM itself (and maybe the NICs). For more information, please read Chapter 1.13 of the current user manual.

Copying a guest is good for a backup, where you intend to replace the failed guest with just one new guest based on the backup.

Cloning is good if you want more than one copy of the guest on the host. Cloning slightly changes the guest so the ID numbers for the various parts of the guest (the UUIDs) don't conflict with other guests. (Virtualbox only allows one instance of a particular UUID in its system and will complain if you try to bring in a guest with a part having the same UUID as another guest.) Same thing for duplicate MAC addresses. Keep in mind that changing the UUIDs may cause requirements for reactivation of software in the guest.