How to Create a New VirtualBox VM Using a Exisiting Disk File

After VirtualBox is installed, open it and click New. A Create Virtual Machine Window will pop up. If Guided Mode shows up, click Export Mode. Otherwise, ignore this step.

Once getting into the Expert Mode, select the type of OS (here for example Linux) and version (Debian 64-bit for example) in which the original disk file was created. And then assign a name to your virtual machine, for example IGT-20 Toolchain. Because we will use a existing disk later, choose Do not add a virtual hard disk at this moment.

After the mentioned 4 items are well configured, click Create to create a bearbone virtual machine.

Since the virtual machine has been created, now you can open the folder where your virtual machine should be. If everything is correct, the contents of the folder will looks like the following figure. It’s time to copy, or move, the existing disk file to this folder. Our example disk file name is “eclipse-igt-20.vdi”, which is not shown here in the figure. After the disk file is copied, go back to the VirtualBox Manager.

We’re going to add the disk file to our virtual machine. Click Setting to open the Settings Window.

Follow the numbers in the figure to choose a disk file. When the icon labelled 3 is clicked, a small Windows will appear.

We’re going to add a existing disk. Therefore please click Choose existing disk to open the dialog window.

The default folder show up is the one we just copied the disk file, i.e. eclipse-igt-20.vdi, to. If not, choose the correct folder and select the file disk you expect.

You’ll see in the disk added to your virtual machine, as shown in the red circle. Then click OK to close the Settings Window.

Being back to the VirtualBox Manager, you can see that a SATA disk has been added as shown in the red circle. Then your virtual machine is ready to operate. Click Start to make it running.

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