How to merge snapshot files?

[john-mc]

Hello. I use workstation 17 on ubuntu 22. I created a virtual machine with windows 10 and did some changes in the system. I did not take any snapshots, but when I wanted to backup this virtual machine, I found such files in the directory where the disks are stored

Windows 10 x64-s001.vmdk
Windows 10 x64-s002.vmdk
Windows 10 x64-s003.vmdk
Windows 10 x64-s004.vmdk
Windows 10 x64-s005.vmdk
Windows 10 x64-s006.vmdk
Windows 10 x64-s007.vmdk
Windows 10 x64-s008.vmdk
Windows 10 x64-s009.vmdk
Windows 10 x64-s010.vmdk
Windows 10 x64-s011.vmdk
Windows 10 x64-s012.vmdk
Windows 10 x64-s013.vmdk
Windows 10 x64-s014.vmdk
Windows 10 x64-s015.vmdk
Windows 10 x64-s016.vmdk
Windows 10 x64.vmdk

If I understand correctly, then these are files of some kind of automatic snapshots and other actions that were done by default when creating a virtual machine. I do not need all these changes and would like to get just one virtual hard disk file Windows 10 x64.vmdk to make a backup of it.  But if I go into snapshots, then they don’t exist, it’s clean there. How do I combine these snapshot files (unless they are snapshot files, which I'm not completely sure about) and get one single file. In the system, I disabled the creation of automatic snapshots wherever I found this option

This is how the snapshot menu for this virtual machine looks like

snapshot manager

[RDPetruska · Accepted solution]

Those are not snapshots, those are the slices of the virtual disk.  Do not delete or rename any of them, or your VM will no longer work.

Trust us long-timers, you do NOT want a single-file monolithic sparse disk.  If there is any corruption, it is nearly impossible to recover.  Also, any disk maintenance you want to perform like defragmenting, shrinking, or expanding will require enough free space on your hard disk of the maximum defined size of the virtual disk.  If you keep it in slices, then the free space required is only the size of one slice plus some overhead.

Easiest method I have used for years to backup my VM's is to simply zip up the entire folder, and append the date to the filename.  That way I can keep multiple backup copies in the same external drive folder.

[john-mc]

Thanks a lot for the explanation. For me, one file is more simple, but a directory is also not difficult to save.