Drive Letter Change - Reregister VDI for VirtualBox VM

Question

Today, I was trying to get on my Kali Linux virtual machine to just do a basic vulnerability check on a VPS I own. I have my Kali Linux Virtual Disk Image (VDI) saved on a USB external drive, so I plugged that in, fired up Virtual Box, but I got an error when I went to start it. It would appear that the drive letter for this drive has changed from F: to E:. Thus, VirtualBox could not retrieve the VDI from F:\Kali Linux VM\.

Trying to troubleshoot this on my own, I decided to open up the VM settings, remove the SATA Controller VDI that was registered on the F: drive, and then add the VDI from the E: drive (same VDI, just a difference in drive letter). That, however, did not go as smoothly as planned. I was able to remove incorrect VDI path without any problems, but when I tried to add the VDI on the proper path, I got the following error:

Cannot register the hard disk 'E:\Kali Linux VM\Kali Linux.vdi' {6b214e73-ae38-427b-90f8-995c7dd4211c} because a hard disk 'F:\Kali Linux VM\Kali Linux.vdi' with UUID {6b214e73-ae38-427b-90f8-995c7dd4211c} already exists.

Result Code: E_INVALIDARG (0x80070057) Component: VirtualBoxWrap Interface: IVirtualBox {0169423f-46b4-cde9-91af-1e9d5b6cd945} Callee RC: VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND (0x80BB0001)

It looks like I cannot add the VDI back to the VM because it is identical to the VDI I removed.

Has anyone else encountered a problem like this? And does anyone have a fix for this so I don't lose all the data on that VM?

Thank you all in advance.

Note: I know this isn't a programming question, so this may be the wrong Stack Exchange. Please let me know if this would be better suited under a different Stack Exchange site.

Answer 1

Open Oracle VM VirtuaBox Manager. Now go to

File > Virtual Media manager

Under Hard disks, select Kali Linux.vdi. Right click and remove it.

NOTE: If remove is disabled. Click release first. Then right click and remove.

Now add the VDI Kali Linux.vdi again.