Virtualbox clonehd #vm #virtualbox #tips #errormessages

$ VBoxManage clonehd "./Library/VirtualBox/HardDisks/foobar.vdi" ./a
Oracle VM VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 3.2.6
(C) 2005-2010 Oracle Corporation
All rights reserved.

ERROR: Cannot register the hard disk '/Users/elventails/Library/VirtualBox/HardDisks/foobar.vdi' with UUID {be14e67b-c06c-4a06-b8e7-27b5cec7bbba} because a hard disk '/Users/elventails/Library/VirtualBox/HardDisks/foobar.vdi' with UUID {be14e67b-c06c-4a06-b8e7-27b5cec7bbba} already exists in the media registry ('/Users/elventails/Library/VirtualBox/VirtualBox.xml')
Details: code NS_ERROR_INVALID_ARG (0x80070057), component VirtualBox, interface IVirtualBox, callee nsISupports
Context: "OpenHardDisk(Bstr(szFilenameAbs), AccessMode_ReadWrite, false, Bstr(""), false, Bstr(""), srcDisk.asOutParam())" at line 630 of file VBoxManageDisk.cpp


This is a misleading error message.

VBoxManage clonehd actually required the full paths to work.

So simply use:

VBoxManage clonehd /full/path/to/vditoclone.vdi /full/path/to/newcopy.vdi