How to Increase VMware Hard Disk Space

A common issue that people run into when using VMware is that once they have created there virtual machine and installed there OS and everything else they eventually run out of room and decide to increase the Virtual machines hard disk / partition.

For this example I am running VMware server on Windows Vista , WIth one virtual machine running Linux Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy and will go through the steps to increase my harddrive size from 15GB to 25GB

Increasing Hard Disk Size on your Virtual Machine ( VMware )

Step 1.

Firs thing to do is locate the location of vmware.exe on your PC typically it will be in C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Server or VMware Workstation

Once you have located your vmware.exe file open up command prompt on Windows. [Start -> Run -> type "cmd" in the window then press ENTER

Now navigate into the vmware.exe directory , in this case simply C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Server

From here type vmware-vdiskmanager -x 25GB image.vmdk

- 25GB in this case we would like to make the NEW size 25GB , this method will not remove any exisiting files

- image.vmdk , Name of your Virtual Machine disk my example was Ubuntu.vmdk, if for some reason it doesn't work type the entire path of the vmdk file for example

vmware-vdiskmanager -x 25GB D:\Virtual Machines\Ubuntu\Ubuntu.vmdk

Now that you have used the VMware diskmanager to increase size of the Virtual Disk Space , this will create a new parition that 10GB in this case ( original 15GB + 10GB increase). This increased size will not automatically show up when we reboot our Virtual Machine. We need to carry out a few extra steps to make use of this newly created space , this involves extending the partition or merging two partitions together.

Step 2.

Before trying to extend your harddrive to include the newly created partition, you will need to open vmdk file in a second virtual machine. The reason for this is that you cannot extend a partition on a drive that you are actually using system files on, It has to be set as the secondary drive.

So go through the steps of making a new virtual machine and give it 4-5GB or so it doesn't need to be huge. You wont actually need to load any Operating system on it if you use the LiveCD. Before you run your second virtual machine you will need to add the harddrive you wish to increase onto that system , see screenshot

Now that you have created your secondary virtual machine, Boot it up and in order to extend our virtual hard disk we will use a inbuilt linux tool called gparted , there are also many other partitioning programs out there including fdisk and many others.

Now we want to load up our ubuntu LiveCD instead of having to install an Operating System, To get your virtual machine to boot up from your LiveCD do the following.

- Use Daemon Tools or any other mounting program and mount your Ubuntu.iso image.

- Start your virtual machine and soon as it starts press ESC to enter the boot menu and from here select CD-ROM

- This will start your secondary virtual machine with the Ubuntu LiveCD

To run gparted simply enter the terminal window and type "gparted" , and this will open the gparted gui window. ( Remember to issue this command with root privledges )

Once gparted has started you will see a window similar to below, We see two parition that we want to join together below circled in red, To extend the exisitng partition to the unallocated partition use the resize button to increase the size of the exisiting partition to increase the size.

( Ensure the harddrive is unmounted, and swapoff )

 Now once you have resized your partition to include the unallocated partition size click apply. This may take sometime for it to resize the partition size.

Once this is complete shutdown the virtual machine and remove the secondary harddrive you added in the previous section. Boot your original virtual machine and you should have successfully extended your hard disk space.

Gparted LiveCD

There is also a gparted LiveCD which can be run if you have trouble deleting and creating partitions. Simply mount the gparted LiveCD and follow the prompts.

Link: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=115843&package_id=271779

If you have made your way through this howto and still unable to get it to work you could try the Vmware Converter which can do all this tasks a lot easier, ( yeaa should've told you a lot earlier) its a free download and can perform partition extensions easily.

VMware Converter

Windows Method

After you have loaded the secondary harddrive on the secondary virtual machine (windows in this case) to fix the partitions. Run the command prompt and enter "diskpart.exe" or if that doesn't work locate its location and run it through cmd using the directory locations.

Steps - type

- show volume

select volume 2 ( in this case , double check to make sure you have the right one)

extend

exit

Then simply shutdown this virtual machine, remove the secondary hard disk, then startup the original virtual machine.

Any QUESTIONS let me know I will try and help you:)