How to Move a VirtualBox Virtual Machine to a New Folder or Another Hard Drive

In this video we discuss various ways to move a VM from one folder to another or from one hard drive to another on your host. There is more than one way to accomplish this, but some methods work better than others. You can export your virtual machine as an OVA appliance, move the VDI disk file manually, move the disk file via the Virtual Media Manager, or move the VM using the built in Move utility from the Oracle VirtualBox Manager.

Here is a writeup of the process on our website.

Check out our book (VirtualBox Made Easy) that is designed to take your virtualization skills to the next level!

#virtualbox

[timbolicous]

The best method starts at 4:30...Thanks, but better to post the best method FIRST, not LAST. Especially with a process that, if done wrong, can really create a lot of effort.

[rdkubmk]

That's a complete solution. Thanks. 4:30 one is the best one and doesn't require any effort.

[manodura]

Nice video, pros & cons of each method clearly discussed. Many thanks.

[johnfogle]

Okay, so what if I did NOT watch this video beforehand, and I just cut/pasted the folder to another drive through Explorer instead of through Virtualbox? Clearly, it didn't work and I couldn't figure out how to remap it through Virtualbox. Also, when I moved it back, it complained about the file being empty despite being 40+GB in size. Help please! 🙂

[ProRatz]

Hey man, i really hope u can help me. I do exactly the same as you do. And it says “access denied: cant locate for test file” what should i do?

[akshadjoshi]

Sir I don’t want to install my virtual box on C drive because I don’t have much space in it and have my main os on it so when I try to install it in D: drive it gives weird permission problem and doesn’t load

[terangames]

all data like web history, password's and all of that is moved as well? It's not like hard reset for VM?

[DS-ouxm]

How does it behave with moving linked clones?

[jonathanedwardgoode]

Thanks for the video! Is there a way to move without powering off the vm. Some of my VMs reset to installation mode after I power off. I've tried a couple of things to stop it from going to installation mode, but they usually result in a no bootable media error

[JonFox]

When I do this I get stuck at 0% during the move process? Any thoughts?

[mydude]

But how do you move the actual app, the software VirtualBox?

[NoEggu]

I ran into a problem where my drive (that held my VM's data) failed.
As such, VirtualBox's listing showed my VMs, but all with minus signs, indicating that they did not exist. Therefore, it offered no choices for pointing the listed machines to a different drive.

I had backups of my VMs on a different drive. But VirtualBox refused to point to that other drive.

I could have simply changed the drive letter of that other drive. But that would have created problems for other programs that used that drive.

My fix was to insert a USB flash drive, and give it the drive letter that my failed drive had.
Then I created a symbolic directory link (via "mklink" using the command prompt) to where my copy of my VMs existed.

Once done, VirtualBox started up like nothing ever happened.
Now that VirtualBox was happy, it allowed me to then point VirtualBox to the actual drive that had my VM's data files, and then I removed the symbolic link.

This was a bit of a pain to accomplish, and would not be necessary, if Oracle allowed you to point your listed VMs to a different location, even when the current location is invalid (for example, from a failed drive).

It seems that VirtualBox insists on combining the operation of transferring your VM data to the new location with changing its database's table's field value to reference the new location.
In other words, it will change the location of the data files, but only if you also let it transfer the data files. And therein lies the rub, if you lose the drive with your data files. No data files where VirtualBox looks results in VirtualBox not changing to a different drive location.

If VirtualBox let you pick a drive letter, so that you can point to your backup VM data, it would make this process a breeze.

They probably do not want users to have that option, because some folks might plug in a new drive letter or new directory, and then they lose access to the VMs.
I think that in such an event, the user would likely just put the original drive letter back.

So as it stands, VirtualBox offers no functionality for dealing with a failed drive.
They seem to expect you to replace the failed drive, recover your data, and all will be well.

The problem is that I did not have a spare drive. Most home users will not have a spare drive. We have to purchase one. So until we take delivery of a replacement drive, we lose access to our VMs, even when we have the data backed up. Only those that have the know-how to work around this problem will have minimal down time.

I am running version 6.0.
It is old, but it works. I have no issues (other than if my drive fails -- but I can deal with that).
I would upgrade to version 7.0, if I knew that they addressed this issue, or had some other "must have" functionality.

[fuckoff]

Thank you so much! I was trying to copy it manually and editing the drive location in settings but I was getting an error haha

[LilDeaks]

Can i then delete the files on the old drive?

[MACFANTASTICKYPESS]

*i cant click on move, its shadow wtf*

[ezrof]

bro just to the point i know u want complicated but it to wasted time and make not 100% work