Error:"failed to open the hard disk" in virtualbox

In virtualbox, if you have made a new hard disk by

$virtualbox clonehd [sourcehd.vdi] [destinationhd.vdi]

and try to build a new virtual machine by selecting the destination.vdi, then you may come across the error below:

Error: failed to open the harddisk !@#$%

The solution is that you have to change the permission of the directory , say

$sudo chown -R [abc]:[abc] ~/VirtualBox VMs