Growing a VMWare Virtual Disk
I need to grow the download disk on hotsoup-p2p, a VMWare Workstation virtual disk that stores my P2P downloads while they’re in progress. It’s only 10GB; I need at least 20GB, probably more.
From this forum posting, I see there’s a utility installed in the VMWare Workstation directory, vmware-vdiskmanager.exe. Running it I get:
Usage: vmware-vdiskmanager.exe OPTIONS diskName | drive-letter:
Offline disk manipulation utility
Options:
-c : create disk; need to specify other create options
-d : defragment the specified virtual disk
-k : shrink the specified virtual disk
-n <source-disk> : rename the specified virtual disk; need to
specify destination disk-name
-p : prepare the mounted virtual disk specified by
the drive-letter for shrinking
-q : do not log messages
-r <source-disk> : convert the specified disk; need to specify
destination disk-type
-x <new-capacity> : expand the disk to the specified capacity
Additional options for create and convert:
-a <adapter> : adapter type (ide, buslogic or lsilogic)
-s <size> : capacity of the virtual disk
-t <disk-type> : disk type id
Disk types:
0 : single growable virtual disk
1 : growable virtual disk split in 2Gb files
2 : preallocated virtual disk
3 : preallocated virtual disk split in 2Gb files
The capacity can be specified in sectors, Kb, Mb or Gb.
The acceptable ranges:
ide adapter : [100.0Mb, 950.0Gb]
scsi adapter: [100.0Mb, 950.0Gb]
ex 1: vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -c -s 850Mb -a ide -t 0 myIdeDisk.vmdk
ex 2: vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -d myDisk.vmdk
ex 3: vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -r sourceDisk.vmdk -t 0 destinationDisk.vm
dk
ex 4: vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -x 36Gb myDisk.vmdk
ex 5: vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -n sourceName.vmdk destinationName.vmdk
ex 6: vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -k myDisk.vmdk
ex 7: vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -p m:
(A virtual disk first needs to be mounted at m:
using the VMware Diskmount Utility.)
So I turned off the virtual machine, and did:
vmware-vdiskmanager -x 25GB "C:\VMs\hotsoup - Shareaza\Downloads.vmdk"
It took forever, but then it was done.
Trouble is, the Windows partition is still only 10GB. I need to expand it.
Using Disk Management, I converted the disk to ‘Dynamic’ from ‘Basic’. Once that’s done, I right-click the disk and chose ‘Expand’. I expanded by 15GB, to use the full capacity of the disk. Too easy.