Creating a Backup Image of your VirtualBox Hard Drive

Posted Wednesday, 03 March 2010 at 20:59 by Andrew Liu
Tagged: virtualisation
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One of the first things I do when creating a VirtualBox image is to back up that raw image. This saves me from going through the reinstallation process again (if and when the image dies, or if you simply want another test box).

Normally, I create a Windows XP image, and store that raw image away. However, there are a few little tricks you need to make VirtualBox recognise the 'copy'.

VirtualBox keeps track of hard drives by identifying them by a UUID. Copying the hard drive file (the .vdi file) simply uses the same UUID, and VirtualBox complains that you cannot register two hard drives with the same UUID. The trick is to create a new UUID on your 'copy'.

$ cd ~
$ cd .VirtualBox
$ cd HardDisks
$ cp Windows\ XP.vdi Windows\ XP\ Raw.vdi
$ VBoxManage internalcommands setvdiuuid Windows\ XP\ Raw.vdi
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 2.1.4
(C) 2005-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
All rights reserved.

UUID changed to: 051449fa-1464-42c8-a033-c12d81b63ffa

Thats it! Now you can use the VirtualBox Virtual Media Manager to add an existing drive, and point it to your copy!

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