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Hamburgian
January 21st, 2015, 02:59 PM
I'm about to buy a new PC (rather than trying to build a suitable box, which had always worked up until 14.04!)
I fully expect a few hiccups along the way and, as such, wil probably have to do a reinstall and use a sources.list to reinstall all my programmes.
Obviously I can set the reinstall to NOt format/delete existing data...but there is a small problem.
At the moment I have two installations...one a fresh 14.04 (64 bit), the other also 14.04 but is a 32 bit installation which has been constantly updated since Gutsy.
I don't have /home for either..I moved them to a separate partition /WORK which has a /home64, a /home32 (each with a virtual drive - Win7 for the 64 bit and WinXp on the 32 bit) I also have a /home where all my docs, pics etc. are kept and shared between the two distros. The /WORK partition is also shared by my swap - i.e. an extended partition.

I'm thinking of getting rid of the 32 bit distro for a while...it has nothing extra except acroread which is no onger available, but in reality no better than ocular. So I could resize and use that as a swap. But If I have to reinstall will my Windows still work..or will I have to reinstall? This really would be a pain and would probably involve lengthy sessions with a windows administrator to reinstall.

Has anyone any experience of doing this, or does anyone know of a workaround?

Ta in advance

MAFoElffen
January 21st, 2015, 03:36 PM
It depends on your virtual machine hyper visor, but the concept is the same. I 32bit and 64 bit VM will both work under a 64bit Virtual Hyper-visor. You install the hypervisor (virtual machine manager).

if the same Virtual manager, you copy over the VM and virtual disk and import the VM.

If different-- Convert the virtual disk image if needed. Then You create a new VM, and use the opton to use existing virtual disk...

Since you are getting a new PC (complete), you could just add your old disk to it (internally or externally) and would make things simpler on tranfering or including things back in.

Hamburgian
January 21st, 2015, 03:52 PM
Wow...quick...I'm thankful and impressed! So I just have to back up my windows folder in the VirtualBox VMs folder...that's 3 files and a folder windows.vbox windows.vbox-prev and windows.vde + logs and it will work on a fresh install?

MAFoElffen
January 22nd, 2015, 12:44 AM
Depending on what version of VirtualBox... 4.0 and newer, all your files associated with that VM are together in the same folder. But 3.x and older was different:
https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=55003