Need Help To Clone to USB. Out of Space Completely

[Bei]

I ran out of space several times on my PC. Each time is due to Virtualbox Snapshots eating up several GB. I do not know why when I am not downloading anything in my VM and I am not creating new snapshots, yet the snapshot sizes are growing and eating up several GB a day.

I am now completely out of space, I want to clone my VM and start fresh to free up all the space used by my current VM. How can I make full clone of just the current VM state to my USB drive and Import it back to my PC?

The plan is to make a backup onto the USB Drive, delete my current VM (freeing up the hundreds of GB of space) and restore the clone from USB. Remember I have literally 0MB of free space left on my PC so I really don't see any other options.

[Bei]

Anyone?

[socratis]

You can clone your VM from within VirtualBox Manager.

BEFORE you do that, go to the Preferences and under "General" change the "Default Machine Folder" to point to your USB. This sets where new VMs will be created. Then right-click on your VM, select Clone, Full clone, Current machine state. This will create a clean clone of your current VM, NOT including any snapshots. If you want your snapshots, change the last step to "Everything".

And a friendly advice; read on what snapshots do and how they work before you start using them again...

[Bei]

Thank you but how do I then move the clone back onto the PC? Just copy the files back?

[socratis]

First you clone, then you remove your VM from your computer and you choose to delete the files when asked. Then take a look at Moving a VM.