VirtualBox: Using snapshots to avoid excessive TimeMachine actitvity
Jan 19, '12 07:30:00AM
Contributed by: ctopfel
Are you running another OS with the great and free VirtualBox virtualization application by Oracle? Are you also using TimeMachine? Chances are that you are excessively using Time Machine and filling your Backup disk with slightly different but still huge disk images. Here's a possible solution to this problem:
VirtualBox provides the possibility to create snapshots. This allows you to go back to a virtual machine state when you are not happy with your virtual machine anymore. Possible examples are: you messed up your system or you caught a virus in your virtual machine.
This feature can also be used for circumventing the problem mentioned above, namely the excessive Time Machine usage.
- Bring your virtual machine to a state you like
- Create a snapshot in VirtualBox
- Exclude the snapshot directory from TimeMachine Backup (it is located in /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/VirtualBox/Machines/VIRTUALBOXNAME/Snapshots, change YOURUSERNAME and VIRTUALBOXNAME accordingly)
Using that trick, the original disk image will be backed up, while the changes you make everyday will not.
Side effects:
Your changes are never backed up, so in case of disk failure, you lose them.
If you make changes that are important, you might want to merge the current state from time to time and create a new "safe" snapshot.
[crarko adds: I haven't used VirtualBox for quite a while, but this should be handy for those of you who do.]
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