Can a second virtual Disk be added to a VMWare Server (vs 1) guest os?

Question

I have a Guest VM on a VMWare Server (version 1) that I need to have more disk space. Is there a way to grow it's virtual disk or add another?

The Host OS is Windows XP 32 Bit. The Guest OS is Windows Server 2008 R2 RC 64 Bit.

Answer 1

You can add an additional virtual disk to the machine by:

Shutdown the Guest OS

Right click the machine in your inventory list (F9 to show Inventory List) and choose Settings

Check what your current Virtual Disk type is, you will see either Hard Disk(IDE X:X) or Hard Disk(SCSI X:X) in the current list of Hardware.

When adding the new disk, use the same type so you will know it works properly. Click the Add button and follow the wizard for adding your new disk.

After you have added the disk, you can startup your virtual machine and windows will see it as a new hard drive just as if you installed a new physical drive in a machine.

If you just want additional disk space under a new drive letter, you can stop here.

To be able to spread your current drive over the two drives you need to convert them both to Dynamic Disks (look here for some more info http://www.petri.co.il/difference_between_basic_and_dynamic_disks_in_windows_xp_2000_2003.htm) then span your current partition across both disks.

Answer 2

i think you can grow existing drives [ but then you need to convince guest os to recognize bigger storage space which is very much file system dependent ].

i'm absolutely sure that you can add new virtual disk to existing vm guest. you just power off guest, edit hardware repository and add new drive. that i've done quite a lot of times.

Answer 3

While not the most straight forward process it is rather trivial to resize the VM's existing partitions, and it's too easy to grow a virtual machines vmdk/vhd.

Windows 2008/Vista and above:

1. Shut down the VM.
2. Increase the size of the existing hard drive.
3. Open Disk Management by launching diskmgmt.msc

4. Right Click on the disk in question and select Extend Volume
   
   

   Windows 2003 R2/XP and below:

5. Shut down the VM.

6. Increase the size of the existing hard drive.
7. Either:
   • Boot into WinPE avaliable in Windows Automated Installation Kit
   • Attach the hard drive to a different VM.
8. Open a cmd prompt and enter the following.
   • We'll do all the work using diskpart so open it by typing.
     diskpart.exe
   • Then locate your disk by entering
     List Disk
   • focus on the disk you increased by selecting it.
     Select Disk 1
     Just look for the disk with the free space you just allocated
   • Next locate the partition your looking for
     list partitions
   • set the focus on the that partition
     select Partition 0
   • Now simply expand the partition.
     Extend
   • your done!
     exit
9. If you used winpe simply reboot, and enjoy the freespace. If you used a surrogate VM. then you'll need to shut that vm down, remove your expanded HD, and reattach to the original VM.