Wednesday, April 22, 2009

How to Resize a VMWare Disk

I use VMWare, and one problem is that the default save being 16gb often runs out of space. After googling for an easy method for increasing the size, I've found several solutions involving using Linux boot CDs, tools etc. This is how I did it:

First, use the VMWare command*:

C:\Program Files (x86)\VMWare\VMWare Workstation\vmware-vdiskmanager -x 32Gb "x:\Dir\DiskFileName.vmdk"

Or where ever your VMWare workstation is installed
This will increase it to 32gb

Then go to http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm and you can use their free version to increase the primary drive.

the free version only supports 32bit OS, so if your vm is 64, you might look at mounting the linux iso at www.sysresccd.org to increase the partition.

Hope that helps.

* one thing to note, I read somewhere that you should not have any snapshots of the drive sitting out there. Also, back everything up first before trying (I made full clones, just in case).