Clone tool for VDI files

Source

A clone tool for VDI files (no other format currently supported) that runs on Windows. Now, I've tested this application on Ubuntu 9.04 with Wine 1.1.29 and it ran without issues. This does NOT mean that Mpack supports Linux or Wine in any way (it may change in the future). It's just a coincidence that it works. Users who don't like the command line, or aren't skilled with it, can use this tool with Wine (see http://www.winehq.org for downloads).

The tool can be found here:

CloneVDI - Discussion and Support

by mpack » 15. Sep 2009, 23:13

Many Windows users dislike the fact that you currently have to use the Command Prompt to clone VDI files. Also, questions often arise related to VDI files such as "how do I increase the maximum size of a VDI?" or "how can I make my dynamic VDI file small again?". As a recent vacation project I decided to try to write a nice simple tool that provided a good answer to all of these questions. Hopefully I succeeded.

Attached to this message is a zip file containing the software tool that I wrote, which I call "CloneVDI" (currently at version 2.02). Features as of this release include:

• Reads VDI,VHD,VMDK,Parallels HDD,RAW files and physical drives, writes VDI.
• A simple GUI Interface.
• A CLI interface too (for people who like that kind of thing!)
• Ability to compact (discard unused blocks from) the clone, with no need to run sdelete/zerofree first.
• Ability to enlarge the maximum size of a virtual disk, optionally enlarging the main partition too.
• User choice to either keep the old UUID or generate a new one for the clone.
• Some useful diagnostics about the source VDI, such as the partition map and the internal fileystem.
• Better feedback while cloning: a progress bar and an estimated time to completion.
• It seems to be significantly faster than "VBoxManage clonehd".
• Open source.

To install, simply create a folder and unpack the zip contents into it. Optionally, you can create a shortcut to link your desktop to the CloneVDI.exe file in the target folder. The zip file includes release notes which hopefully provides answers to all of your questions.

Note that this tool is not simply a GUI front end for VBoxManage. Instead it uses my own code to read and write VDI files (and other formats), and therefore works in a rather different way, with different features and capabilities.
[ last release edit: 1st Mar. CloneVDI attachment updated to v2.02. Fixed another bug in "enlarge partition" feature, completed French language support. ]
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v2.02 source code can now be found attached to the next message.
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Attachments

CloneVDI-exe-2.02.zip

CloneVDI v2.02, executable with release notes.

(119.2 KiB) Downloaded 12012 times