Virtual Machines tend to get broken a lot since people love to use them for testing out new programs, viruses, antiviruses, and other programs which can corrupt a Windows or Linux based Virtual machine. But, you might have saved important data on your virtual machine which you need like a word document. I’ll show you how to recover your files to another virtual drive, or a USB drive by booting the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS ISO CD Image in Virtual Box by Oracle.
1. First you right click your virtual machine which you can’t log into because of a lost password or username, or can’t boot.
2. Go to the System section, and make CD/DVD-ROM the first boot device by using the up and down arrow buttons to move the CD DVD-ROM to the top of the list.
3. Make sure in Storage, make sure the CD DVD disc image is set to your Ubuntu 10.04 LTS install ISO or set to your real CD-ROM Drive with the actual Ubuntu 10.04 LTS install CD in it.
4. You can also make an extra storage drive for your files with the wizard in Virtual box for making virtual drive, or you can make another CD-ROM drive and attach it to your actual CD DVD burner on your computer and burn your files to an actual CD-R or DVD-R burnable disc with Brasso which is Ubuntu’s default CD burning program. If you make a Virtual drive, you need to partition and format it first with Ubuntu’s Gparted found in Systems > Administrations > Gparted before it will show up on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS File Manager.
5. Using your network connection or the internet is another option for backing up your files since Ubuntu 10.04 LTS by default has internet and network connectivity as long as your host computer is connected to the internet and network. You can use sites like Megaupload, or your FTP server or web hosting account to upload your files with an FTP client like FileZilla, or FireFTP.
6.The Simplest way to recover your files, is to use your USB flash drive or hard drive since USB flash drives and hard drives are formated to Fat32 when you buy them in most cases, so it works with Linux, Windows, and Mac Operating Systems. All you need to do is Enable USB Controller and Enable USB 2.0 (EHCI) Controller in VirtualBox USB section, Plug in your USB flash drive and click the USB icon with a Green (+) sign next to a USB plug to add your USB drive.
7. Click OK to save all your settings, and start your virtual machine by clicking the start button on Virtual Box.
8. If you did everything right, your virtual machine should of started from the Ubuntu 10.04 Install ISO. Click on the “Try Ubuntu 10.04 LTS button” to start the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS live desktop.
9. When Ubuntu loaded the Ubuntu 10.04 desktop, click on the Places> Computer on the top menu where you can recover your files by copying your file from drive to drive.
10. If you have a CD-Burner set to one of your CD drives, You can burn your files to CD with Basso. You can also upload your files to the internet with Firefox.
This tutorial only works for non-encrypted hard drives in VirtualBox, and partitions which only can’t boot. If your files or partitions were destroyed by a virus or some other event then you might be out of luck.
The same instructions can be applied to recovering files from a actual computer, but you need to set your computer to start up from the computer’s CD drive or Flash drive by configuring the BIOS/CMOS or by using the start-up boot loader built-in to newer computers. You also need an actual CD or flash drive with the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on it.
Good luck Recovering your important files from your virtual machine which can’t start up anymore.