How to make a virtual machine with .vdi file

Recently I lost everything on my PC and reinstalled Windows. But I have my old Ubuntu virtual machine's .vdi file.

Can I make a virtual machine with that .vdi file? If so, how?

2 Answers

If you are using VirtualBox, then it is not too difficult to take a VDI and use it anywhere. Here's how:

copy your .vdi file to a directory where VirtualBox will be able to access it
run VirtualBox and create a new virtual machine
choose Ubuntu Linux as the operating system and click "Next"
under the "Virtual Hard Disk" option, choose "Use existing hard disk". This will open the "Virtual Media Manager".
in the Virtual Media Manager, click the "Add" button and select the .vdi file that you copied, then click "Next"
configure the rest of the virtual machine as you would like it to be
start the virtual machine

So long as the .vdi file has not been corrupted, it will work just fine.

You also have the option to convert a .vdi file to an .img file and flash that to HDD or USB.

VBoxManage clonemedium --format RAW ubuntu.vdi ubuntu.img

This will create the Ubuntu image file

Install Image File to target drive

Caution: The target drive will be overwritten.

Use Gnome-Disks, Etcher, Rufus, dd or mkusb when you want to restore or clone the image to another HDD or USB drive.

For using Etcher or Rufus to flash an image to HDD see: