Weird Problem with a VMDK file

[mpack]

So there was indeed copying of the file going on. Probably several times.

When was all that done? A long time ago, or immediately before you had this problem?

What options did you set in CloneVDI when you asked it to create the clone? I'm puzzled because CloneVDI errored out at 47%, presumably after copying 21.5GB of data. That means that CloneVDI had calculated 100% to mean 21.5/0.47 ==> 46GB (approx). But, that size doesn't match the disk size in your descriptor, which should be all that CloneVDI cares about. Wrong descriptor perhaps?

Following that track, where did you get that VMDK descriptor? "Sparse" VMDK descriptors are usually embedded within the file. Certainly that would be the case for VMDKs created by "VBoxManage clonehd". I'm wondering if you have two descriptors (one internal, one externa), and a mismatch between their claimed sizes.

Does CloneVDI let you open and clone the "COOJA.vmdk" file? If it does then the latter is your actual VMDK, and you've been mistakenly mixing an old descriptor with a new all-in-one VMDK.

[HelterSkelter]

I really don't get the confusion...
The TOTAL CAPACITY that I allocated for this virtual machine is 21 GB. The .vmdk file size is 21 GB. How much data is actually INSIDE the disk and how much free space, no idea, but we can assume that it crashed at roughly 21 x 0.45 = 9.45 GB. If that's what you want to know..


To answer your questions, I've done the resizing process only once, my exact commands if i remember the syntax correctly where:

# Clone the .vmdk image to a .vdi.
vboxmanage clonehd "old.vmdk" "old.vdi" --format vdi'

# Resize the new .vdi image (21 GB = 21500 roughly).
vboxmanage modifyhd "old.vdi" --resize 21500

#switch back to .vmdk format
VBoxManage clonehd "old.vdi" "new.vmdk" --format vmdk

CloneVDI lets me open the .vmdk file. I got the vmdk descriptors from "DiskInternals VMFS Recovery Tool" which can read my virtual disk (read-only).

[mpack]

I really don't get the confusion...

I know you don't, but I've been trying to get useful information out of you anyway. And, I didn't say you had done the resizing more than once, I said the data had been copied several times, which is something you denied until I pointed out that your claim couldn't be true. You cloned (one copy), then you resized, then you cloned again. That's not one significant manipulation, but three.

However, it's obvious that my questions irritate you so I guess I'm done here.