Can not use old Snapshots after Windows 7 rebuild.

[CEdw2014]

Hi All,

My Windows 7 PC had a major problem and I needed to completely rebuild it. I kept my VirtualBox vdi and snapshot files on a separate disk so I thought all I needed to do to get my VirtualBox up and running again was to attach a new VirtualBox machine to the old vdi file and point the snapshot folder location to the old snapshot folder. When I did this to a new VirtualBox machine it only uses the first vdi file and doesn't show the snapshots.

Even though I have reinstalled Windows 7 I have software that can uninstall any deleted files. What files and folders do I need to undelete to get my VirtualBox machine to use the old snapshots. Can you please give me instructions on what files and folders I need to uninstall and where I should move them to to use the old VirtualBox snapshots.

Many thanks
Colin

[mpack]

This doesn't belong in "Windows Guests". This is a host backup procedure issue, nothing at all to do with any guest. Moving this topic to "Windows Hosts".

Now to your chain of catastrophes.

First, copying bare disk images around is not how you back up a VM, especially one which uses snapshots. By losing the ".vbox" file you also lost all the connections between snapshots. You need to copy the entire VM folder to make a backup, and that also means that the disk images should be kept in that folder. If you are short of space on one drive then move the entire VM, not just the most obvious bits of it.

And re your question about undeleting the .vbox file: after completely destroying the old host OS filesystem as you did by reinstalling Win7, there is zero chance that an undelete will work.

I hope you still have the VDIs backup, otherwise attaching the base VDI to a VM quite possibly damaged the disk beyond repair.

[mpack]

As a solution: copy your base VDI plus all snapshot VDIs into a single folder. Identify the newest snapshot, and clone it using CloneVDI. Do not clone the base VDI.

The result should be an up to date and stand alone VDI clone which you can build a new VM around.

I suggest that you avoid snapshots in future, or make better backups, or both!