First of all I want to thank Patrick for his great work and his project.
I’m a whonix 7 user and now I want to install whonix 8. Updating is not possible, but how can I tranfer the most important data to my new installation? Especially the adresses of bitmessage I want to save. (Or the whole installation…)
Shared folders or using a portable drive? What do you suggest?
Greetings
Up to now a whonix 7 user
First of all I want to thank Patrick for his great work and his project.Thanks. It's not only me, also others made lots of great contributions.
I'm a whonix 7 user and now I want to install whonix 8. Updating is not possible, but how can I tranfer the most important data to my new installation? Especially the adresses of bitmessage I want to save. (Or the whole installation...) Shared folders or using a portable drive? What do you suggest?We don't have a great answer to this. You can find an overview and documentation for all methods here: https://www.whonix.org/wiki/File_Transfer
Ok. Thanks to all involved. 
Too bad, I’ll try some ideas maybe it will work.
Thx
The difficulty of moving your data (and even the images themselves) around is a sore spot in Whonix user experience right now. VirtualBox using closed source drivers for their usb support is especially frustrating. Having a better answer for all this will be an important milestone for Whonix.
here is the simplest and fastest method i’ve found.
1.) create a randomly named new “hard drive” in the storage settings for whonix workstation 7.
2.) boot up whonix workstation and format the new drive like you would in any other linux installation. mount it. copy all the work, email folders, etc. that you wish to save to the new drive. then, shutdown whonix workstation 7.
3.) open the virtual media manager in virtualbox and “copy” the new randomly named hard drive for whonix workstation 7 to a vdi file named something like “whonix8temp.vdi.”
4.) attach “whonixtemp8.vdi” to yyour storage settings for whonix workstation 8.
5.) boot up whonix workstation 8, mount the new drive, and copy your work over.
done. you can erase the new hd images you made in the virtual media manager when complete.
The solution proposed by tempest is nice. But even if you are against it, Patrick, why not use the guest additions shared folders once for that purpose?
Just mount the share in the old Workstation. Copy the important files in ‘/media/share/’ or wherever it is mounted. The files for me: the AppArmor profiles, the Tor browser directory, so I did not have to reinstall it and i get my bookmarks, ‘/home/user/.icedove’ for my email accounts and ‘/home/user/.gnugpg’ for my keys. There will probably be more to come.
Close the old Workstation, start the new one, mount the share and get back all the files you have put in there.
I think all you need is the file ~/.config/PyBitmessage/keys.dat