How do I recover files from a corrupt VDI file?
Most of the time a crash while running a VM with VirtualBox will corrupt the profile, not the VDI.
Try making a fresh profile and add the existing VDI as the disk. You could also try a scandisk on the host system if you haven't.
In my case the VDI crashed within a new profile too.
Do the following steps to rescue data:
- create a new profile with your .vdi to rescue as a harddisk
- download a linux live CD (like puppy, xubunu...) and add it as a live-cd image to the new profile
- start the VM
- mount the .vdi file (in my case it was sda2) and rescue your files as you like (send them as email to yourself)
have fun