Hello everybody!
This video will show you how to create an Oracle VirtualBox virtual machine, and how
to recover data from a virtual disk of such machine after a failure or when the virtual
machine can’t start.
In order to create a virtual machine: • Install and run Oracle VirtualBox.
Its official webpage: https://www.virtualbox.org/
• Click the New button in the toolbar at the top of the window.
• In the wizard window, enter the name of the new virtual machine.
• The operating system type that you are going to install.
• In our case, that is Microsoft Windows.
Version - Windows 10 64-bit • Please note that you can install onto
your virtual machine not only Windows, but also other operating systems, including Linux.
• Next • Assign the memory size you’d like to
give this virtual machine.
It is recommended to have at least 2 Gb.
• I allocate 4 Gb because my computer has 8Gb of memory installed.
To make sure the virtual machine is not going to be too hard for your PC to handle, I recommend
setting its memory size at no more than 50% of the actual memory available.
• Next • Select settings for the hard disk of the
virtual machine.
You can create a new one or connect an existing one.
• I select Create a new virtual hard disk • Create
• In the next window, select the virtual hard disk type.
By the way, there is also an Expert mode button, clicking on which you can access more hard
disk settings.
Now let’s get back to virtual disk types: A user can choose the disk format for the
machine being created.
By default, it is VDI.
If you don’t need to use the disk with other software virtualization products, you can
leave this setting as it is.
But if you expect to use this disk with other virtual machines, please remember that:
• VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image) is a disk format compatible with Oracle VirtualBox;
• VMDK (Virtual Machine Disk) is a disk format compatible with VMware Workstation;
• VHD, VHDX (Virtual Hard Disk) is compatible with Microsoft Hyper-V;
• HDD (Parallels Hard Disk) is a Parallels disk format;
• QED (QEMU enhanced disk) is the format for QEMU/KVM;
• QCOW (QEMU Copy-On-Write) is the format for QEMU (qcow2).
• In this window, you can also set the size of the disk you are creating.
The size can be anything you like.
But it’s better to have at least 30 Gb, and make sure that your hard disk still has
enough space after you create the virtual machine.
That is because your virtual machine may become larger in the course of work.
• You can also choose the format: dynamically allocated or fixed-size.
Dynamically allocated option is more efficient in terms of saving hard disk space, as such
virtual disk will grow when more data is saved there.
• Next
The virtual machine is created and we can see it in the list on the left.
All of its settings are shown on the right.
• Run the virtual machine by clicking on Start, shown as a green arrow in the toolbar.
• As our virtual machine has no operating system installed, we have to show the path
to the installation disk.
By default, it is the CD/DVD drive - in our case, disk D. However, by clicking on this
icon - a folder with a green arrow - you can change the path and select an ISO image or
a USB drive instead.
Watch another video on our channel to see how to create a bootable USB drive to install
Windows; find the link in the description.
• I specify the path to the ISO image I have prepared beforehand.
• Next • After that, Windows installation starts.
Installing Windows on an Oracle VirtualBox virtual machine is similar to making a clean
installation on a desktop or laptop computer.
That is why I won’t go into details.
Watch another video by our channel to see how to make a clean installation of Windows.
You will find the link in the description.
After the operating system is installed, you will have another (that is, virtual) operating
system that works inside the operating system of your computer.
All files of this operating system (both system files and user files) are stored on the computer’s
hard disk.
By default, this folder is named VirtualBox VMs and can be found here:
C:\Users\UserName\VirtualBox VMs Note: you can change location of the virtual
machines folder in the program settings if necessary.
To do it, go to File / Preferences / General and specify the folder you want to place virtual
machines in.
The main files of an Oracle VM VirtualBox virtual machine are as follows:
• *.vbox – a settings file describing the virtual machine and its settings;
• And actually the virtual machine disk image file - *.vdi (or *.vmdk, *.vhd, *.vhdx,
*.hdd, *.qed, *.qcow, depending on the format of the virtual disk that you have selected
during installation).
While the virtual machine is running, the program can create additional files or folders
if necessary: • Logs – the folder containing virtual
machine log files; • Snapshots – the folder containing virtual
machine snapshot files (images of the virtual machine condition).
In this video, I want to show you one trick, just in case if for some reason your virtual
machine is no longer working, and there are important files on its disks.
I will show you how to recover them.
Though Oracle VirtualBox is a virtual machine, real data can be saved there.
As we have already said, all files stored in virtual machine disks are located in .vdi
files of the virtual disk (in our case).
Hetman Partition Recovery, the program for hard disk data recovery, has the function
of mounting virtual disks and recovering data from such disks.
You can download Hetman Partition Recovery here.
In order to get access to virtual machine files:
1.
Run Hetman Partition Recovery and mount the virtual machine disk.
If there are several of them, you can mount them all at once or one by one.
 To mount a virtual disk with the help of Hetman Partition Recovery, click on Mount
Disk in the quick access menu of the program.
As a result, the window of choosing a virtual disk will open.
 Go to the folder containing the virtual machine and choose the necessary virtual disk
file.
 Open
2.
As you do that, the section “Mounted Disks” containing the list of mounted virtual disks
will appear in the window, where all disks found by the application are shown.
If you mount several disks, you will see the entire disk list there.
3.
Scan the disk with the application by clicking on the disk in the disk manager
4.
After the analysis, the application will show the directory tree of the scanned disk.
5.
Find and recover the necessary files to a convenient location in your main operating
system.
By the way, you can use this method to move files from a virtual machine disk to the main
operating system.
The methods we have described for recovering data of an Oracle VM VirtualBox virtual machine
are good for virtual machine regardless of their virtual disk format: *.vdi, *.vmdk,
*.vhd, *.vhdx, *.hdd, *.qed, *.qcow and they will be absolutely similar for all of these
virtual disk formats.
In this video, we have used the *.vdi virtual disk format as an example.
I also recommend watching our previous videos on VMWare Workstation and Microsoft Hyper-V
virtual machines; you can find the links in the description of this video.
How to create a VMWare virtual machine and recover data from a VMDK disk with VMFS.
How to create a Microsoft Hyper V virtual machine and recover data from a VHDX disk.
That is all for now.
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We’ll be glad to answer any questions in comments.
Thank you for watching and good luck!