VBoxManage clonehd

This command duplicates a registered virtual hard disk image to a new image file with a new unique identifier (UUID). The new image can be transferred to another host system or imported into VirtualBox again using the Virtual Media Manager; see "The Virtual Media Manager" and "Cloning disk images". The syntax is as follows:

VBoxManage clonehd <uuid|inutfile> <uuid|outputfile> [--format VDI|VMDK|VHD|RAW|<other>] [--variant Standard,Fixed,Split2G,Stream,ESX] [--existing]

The disk image to clone as well as the target image must be described either by its UUIDs (if the mediums are registered) or by its filename. Registered images can be listed by VBoxManage list hdds (see "VBoxManage list" for more information). A filename must be specified as valid path, either as an absolute path or as a relative path starting from the current directory.

The following options are available:

--format

Allow to choose a file format for the output file different from the file format of the input file.

--variant

Allow to choose a file format variant for the output file. It is a comma-separated list of variant flags. Not all combinations are supported, and specifying inconsistent flags will result in an error message.

--existing

Perform the clone operation to an already existing destination medium. Only the portion of the source medium which fits into the destination medium is copied. This means if the destination medium is smaller than the source only a part of it is copied, and if the destination medium is larger than the source the remaining part of the destination medium is unchanged.

For compatibility with earlier versions of VirtualBox, the "clonevdi" command is also supported and mapped internally to the "clonehd" command.