Repairing the Corrupt VDI File of VirtualBox Using Checkdisk

A virtual drive file, the VDI file is a file that is used by the virtual machine VirtualBox of Oracle, which is a desktop virtualization solution that is an open-source program. One can mount it as a hard disk on different platforms like Windows, Unix and Mac. Using it, one can easily run programs that are written for various OSs in a speedy virtual setting.

VDI File Corruption – A Practical Scenario

A computer user recently faced this tricky situation where his problem emerged a few days ago when several windows simultaneously started opening up haphazardly in the Windows 7 OS version. With any proper knowledge of fixing such issues and to avoid such an unsought behavior of the system, he immediately turned off his machine forcibly (by clicking and holding the power off button till the system turns off). The actual problem according to him was that, he had a VirtualBox VM that was running together at that time and what was worse than this was that, his VM started downloading a particular file. As per him, the major reason behind this unexpected explosion of several windows, opening altogether, was that, the partition holding the virtual drive VDI image might have encountered one bad sector. 

Now, at this point of time, he again turned on his machine and after doing so, he found that his VDI image was at 0 bytes, which means it became an empty file now. However, he failed to notice that the VDI file was at 0 bytes instantaneously, so he initially had some other VM open. Though, he did not do any such thing to worsen the condition, but only in order to save the state of his virtual machine. He did write some data to the disk, but that was only a little bit. He was later able to figure out that this was something that can possibly cause a big trouble for him now as he thought he could now recover only a small fragment of his VirtualBox VDI file. The user also did not remember the actual size of his VDI file, but using a third-party tool, he could easily recover 40 GB of data from his corrupted that appeared having the same UUID as the file that was original.

Repairing Corrupt VDI Using Checkdisk     

In order to repair a corrupt VDI file of the VirtualBox after the issues like sudden restart of the system or anomalous shutdown of the system etc., is much easier than you might even think. You just need to follow the steps given below in order to recover VDI with Checkdisk:

1.      First and foremost, you need to locate the drive where that corrupt VirtualBox VDI file is stored

2.      Then, go to “My Computer”

3.      After that, click the targeted drive for selection

4.      Now, you have to right click the selected drive for opening the context menu

5.      And then, choose “Properties”

6.      After that, go to the “Tools” tab

7.      Then, under the “Error Checking”, you have to click the “Check now” button

8.      And then, check all the options in the Check disk

9.      Press the “Start” button now

10.  If your drive is currently not in use, then the check disk will itself start at once

11.  Now, your drive is not currently in use by your machine, you will get prompted by this dialog.

12.  You will then be asked whether you first wish to dismount the drive volume

13.  Press the “Cancel” button

14.  Next, you will then be asked whether you wish scheduling of the disk check next time when you start your machine

15.  You then have to choose the “Schedule disk check” button

16.  And then, you restart the system for starting the disk check

17.  After disk check is completed, your corrupted VDI file of the VirtualBox would be fixed by now

18.  You can now try to load your VM for testing the results