Working With Snapshots

A snapshot is a saved state of the virtual machine. Snapshots can be created manually or automatically when the virtual machine is running. After you make a snapshot, you can continue working with the virtual machine and revert to the created snapshot at any time of your work.

Snapshots are stored inside the virtual machine bundle , in the Snapshots subfolder. Each snapshot has a number of files, including the .sav file that contains the virtual machine's state, the .mem file that contains the memory dump for the virtual machine, and other different files of the virtual hard disk.

Note: Snapshots are not backup copies or clones of your virtual machine. You cannot use them alone without your virtual machine or move them from the virtual machine bundle.

You may need to make snapshots in the following cases:

• If you are configuring software that requires a lot of settings, you may want to explore the settings functions before selecting them. For testing the settings, create snapshots at branching points.
• If you want to mark milestones in the development process. If something goes wrong, you can always revert to the previous state or create a branch of snapshots starting with the particular milestone snapshot.

Note 1: Snapshots cannot be created for virtual machines that use the Boot Camp partition.

Note 2: If a virtual machine has one or more snapshots, you can neither compress nor resize its virtual hard disk.