VirtualBox

Opened 16 years ago

Closed 16 years ago

#992 closed defect (invalid)

Virtualbox fails to read VDI from disk with bad sector

Reported by: pilovis Owned by:
Component: other Version: VirtualBox 1.5.2
Keywords: Cc:
Guest type: other Host type: other

Description

Virtualbox gestisce l'hard disk virtuali tramite un singolo file con dimensioni di molti gigabytes. Il rischio che un file cosi' grosso si corrompa e' elevato, bastano pochi settori danneggiati e la macchina virtuale non parte piu', inoltre fare la copia (backup) di un file cosi' grosso e' un'impresa non indifferente. Inoltre, se il file .vdi si corrompe non c'e' modo di recuperare i files contenuti al suo interno (se non con settimane di lavoro da super esperto). Io ho perso tutto proprio per questo motivo. Vmware invece permette di usare partizioni reali e hard disk reali, per cui se si incrica vmware i files restano al loro posto, perfettamente visibili e utilizzabili. Mai piu' virtualbox fino a quando non sara' in grado di gestire le partizioni reali!

Change History (4)

comment:1 by pilovis, 16 years ago

Virtualbox handles the virtual disk with a single hudge file. The possibility that such a hudge file get corrupted is very high and if so you will loose everything! This is what happened to me, I lost everything for a single defective sector that affected my .vdi file, I lost 10 gigabytes of data in a fraction of second! Vmware instead, handles real partitons or real hard disks, anything might happen you won't lose a single file.

comment:2 by pilovis, 16 years ago

NOTE: someone could say to me that it is enough to create a backup of the .vdi file to avoid risk!

Have you ever tried to backup of a file of 20 Gygabyte at least once a week?

comment:3 by Klaus Espenlaub, 16 years ago

Summary: Virtualbox unreliableVirtualbox fails to read VDI from disk with bad sector

I'm sorry, but no one can help you (or improve VirtualBox) if you don't provide any hard facts. And I don't start with the backup topic, as it's of secondary interest initially. You blame VBox for data lost because of a broken (real) disk drive, without describing what happened. What error did you get (Machine|Show Log...)? What did you do in reaction? Because if the host OS would just signal a read error for a data block in the VDI file, the guest OS should just see the same (more or less). But I suspect the bad sector actually was somewhere in the filesystem metadata. But without facts this is hard to say for sure. (BTW, I took the freedom to set the topic of this defect to something more accurate.)

Also the "solution" you refer to is available in VirtualBox, too. VirtualBox can handle raw disks and partitions. It's described in the manual how to set this up.

And finally I have to get back to the topic of (not) having backups. It's pure illusion that using raw disk/partitions eliminates the needs for creating proper backups of your valuable data. Next time the disk won't just have a bad sector, it might just die completely in a fraction of a second, e.g. because of a power spike. What should VirtualBox do in this situation to save you?

comment:4 by Sander van Leeuwen, 16 years ago

Resolution: invalid
Status: newclosed
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