how to increase vmware hard disk size

Question

i want to increase my vmware virtual pc harddisk size..... i set default size of 8 gb but i want to increase its size. there is no extend option in vmware but we can add an new hard disk.. i want to increase the existing hard disk size... have an to it.... reply

Answer 1

There is a VMWare KB article that deals with this. As there are several ways of doing it I wont try and precis it here. Be aware that your host OS needs to be able to increase the size of the partition after the disk has been enlarged.

Answer 2

You have two options:

1) shut machine down, extend disk (probably a CLI method) and then boot off an ISO that has an NTFS partition extender.

2) create a new virtual disk and assign it to the machine, boot the VM off a clonezilla ISO and duplicate and extend the smaller disk to the larger one.

Next time, thin provision and set the size pretty high, save you the pain later.

Answer 3

Option 1:

You should try to resize your VMWare drive using the VMDiskSize Tool. As long as the disk doesn't contain snapshots, this should work just fine.

Option 2:

Also, I noticed that in my VMWare Player there is an option to expand the size of the disk, but it won't expand the filesystem. You could in theory try that, and if the filesystem partition doesn't expand, you could always use a partitioning tool, like QtParted, to resize the partition to fit the new size.

If you do use this option, here are some instructions on Increasing Disk Space in VMWare.