How to get data from a VirtualBox .vdi file?

Question

I have wrongly removed the parent snapshot of a virtual machine so that I cannot recover the latest environment. VirtualBox shows me info similar to below:

Parent hard disk with UUID {943bb73f-15cb-4ac1-d8b9-5869e60a69bc} of the hard disk '/media/win/TestS/Snapshots/{bf88b943-d27f-42b3-e28e-d5ebe6ffc523}.vdi' is not found in the media registry ('/home/air/.VirtualBox/VirtualBox.xml')

Could I recover my virtual machine? Or open the .vdi file to get my data?

Answer 1

It sounds like you've unregistered the .vdi file within VBox but that you still have the file - correct? And you want data from that parent disk? Try making a new VM and attaching the file as an existing hard disk. If that fails, clone the.vdi with

vboxmanage clonehd <the-old-vdi-file>.vdi <a-new-name>.vdi

You should be able to attach that.

Answer 2

Each VDI (virtual drive image) has its own unique UUID. If you merely try to copy the VDI file, you get an exact match (clone) including a duplicate UUID. VirtualBox modifies the clone process so that a different UUID is assigned. That way you can have a duplicate VDI that can be mounted as a guest separately, or accessed from a different client if you set it up under shared folders. If you can't mount the original, you can discard the guest entry for it -- but don't delete the VDI itself. Just set up a new guest, and reuse to original VDI for it. You just use an existing hard disk instead of creating a new hard disk