Deleting top-level and nested snapshots

[CodingButStillAlice]

Dear colleagues!


I need to delete some snapshots of my "Windows 7 virtual machine" in order to free diskspace. I run VirtualBox version 4.1.12_Ubuntu.

I have a nested hierarchy of snapshots, looking like the following:

Code: Select all

+ Initial
   + A
     + - B
         + - B1
     + -  C
           + - C1
                 + - C2
                      +- C3
            + Current state
      + -  D

My questions are:

1.) If I delete A (which is dervied from initial and father node of B, C, D and their subtrees), will the rest of the tree be kept?

2.) Is it generally safe to delete any snapshot from the tree?

[socratis]

If you delete A the changes between A and B will propagate to B. I'm not sure about C and D, but I'm willing to bet that they will. Now, since we can't go on bets and hunches, I would definitely back up the whole tree before attempting to try it out.

[mpack]

Actually, if A is the shared branching point for snapshots B,C and D then I don't believe it will let you delete A, because that would in effect create 3 VMs in one wrapper.

I believe your best best is to create full (not linked, and don't preserve snapshot structure) VM clones of the B, C and D states (rather: each of the child states you want to keep) - then after testing all of them you can delete the original VM.

[CodingButStillAlice]

Thanks a lot for your help!!!