It often happens that you start building your virtual machine hard disk with something in mind and after few days or months you realise that the new technology that you want to give a try needs a bigger hard disk. The reasons can be different but the need for a bigger space is always there.

Solution 1: Using VHD Resize tool to increase size of Virtual Hard Drive

Solution 2: Using Norton ghost to increase size of a Virtual Hard Drive

Safety point: In both cases, do not delete the first VHD till you confirm that the new Virtual Hard Drive is working fine.

If you encounter any issues or have alternate solutions then let me know.

Make sure that the virtual machine is shut down and not in a saved state.

2.

Download a VHD resize tool. There are many available for free download.

3.

Create a new VHD of desired size. Say you want to upgrade from 10GB to 40GB then create the 40GB VHD using Microsoft Virtual PC.

4.

Use the VHD tool, and provide it path for both the VHDs. In some cases the tool will make the second VHD by itself, so check it.

5.

This tool will make a partition of 10GB on your new VHD and copy all data as it is.

6.

Now you can remove the first one and boot using second one.

Well its not that simple.

There is a flaw. After booting you will recognize that there is only 10GB space available. Here you will need to use some partition manager tool to extend this partition to cover the 30GB un-partioned space.

Though this doesn’t sound as a quick solution, this one is the safest I feel.

Important: Do not delete the first VHD till you confirm that the new Virtual Hard Drive is working fine.

Back to How to increase hard disk size of a VMware workstation or VMware server

See also: Using Norton ghost to increase size of a Virtual Hard Drive

Create a new VHD of desired size. Say you want to upgrade from 10GB to 40GB then create the 40GB VHD using Microsoft Virtual PC.

Now attach the new virtual hard drive to your existing virtual pc using VMware Configuration Editor (settings).

Get Norton Ghost and install it in your virtual machine drive. Start Norton ghost. In “Advanced” use the “Clone wizard” for the same.

Select the first drive (the existing smaller HDD) as the source disk and second drive (the newly added bigger VHD) as a destination disk. Ghost will now transfer your existing data to the new VHD.

Shut down the virtual machine when Ghost completes its process of copying. Now using the VMware Configuration Editor, remove the smaller HDD and power on the virtual machine. Do not delete the first VHD till you confirm that the new Virtual Hard Drive is working fine.

Back to How to increase hard disk size of a VMware workstation or VMware server

See also: Using VHD Resize tool to increase size of Virtual Hard Drive