How To Expand A VMware Disk, using GParted

Warning: If you are running a virtual machine Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista you can most probably not boot after you repartition your boot drive. Don’t be alarmed. It happened to me too, and it’s and easy fix, and I will be linking to another post of mine that fixes it.

I have sometimes had to increase the size of my virtual machines in VMware. The problem is usually that I underestimate how much room I need. I made my most recent VMware disk as a 16 GB expanding disk, and after installing Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, SharePoint and various little tools, I’m out of room.

There’s several ways to do it, some are faster, but this one is pretty much guaranteed to work.

1: The Virtual Machine needs to to shut down. Run Checkdisk to check integrity of your disk. Run it by typing chkdsk in a console window.

2: Run the VMware Virtual Disk Manager and specify what size you want to end up with and the path to the Virtual Machine Disk file (.vmdk).
If the disk is expandable then it will still be expandable after the operation.

Example:
C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Workstation\vmware-vdiskmanager -x 30Gb “c:\PathToYourVMDisk\MyVMDiskFile.vmdk”

Mine looked like this (64-bit Vista)
C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\vmware-vdiskmanager -x 30Gb “C:\Users\tsd\Documents\Virtual Machines\TSD-MOSSTEST\TSD-Windows2008Base.vmdk”

It will take a little while depending on the chosen size and how fast your harddrive is. Operation took me about 20 minutes.

Note: Your Virtual Disk will now be the size you wanted, but your partition in your virtual machine will not. That’s just how Windows works. You need to expand the partition.
If your disk is a dynamic one, don’t expect to see the size increase right now. It will increase only when the space is filled out.

If the partition you wish to expand are not a system disk, then you can actually just use “diskpart” but the disk you are expanding are most likely your c-drive (as was mine). This calls for 3rd party tools.
You can use a tool like Partition Magic and a lot of other. I chose to use a free tool.

3: Download “System Rescue CD” from: http://www.sysresccd.org/Download and mount it in VMware so you can boot from it.

4: When booting from the iso you will see this next screen. Hit enter to boot the iso.

How To Expand VMware Disk

5: At next screen type “wizard” to start up the graphical environment, and select the first option (if it does not work, try again with one of the other options)

How To Expand A VMware Disk - System Rescue CD Wizard

How To Expand A VMware Disk - Start graphical environment

6: When the system has booted, start GParted by clicking the 2nd icon from the left, in the bottom of the screen.

How To Expand A VMware Disk - Start GParted

7: When GParted is started select the partition you want to extend, and click the “resize” icon or select it from the “Partition” menu.

How To Expand A VMware Disk - Resize

8: Under “New Size” type however much you want to allocate. There’s not much reason to allocate anything less than the maximum size since it’s already allocated to the Virtual Machines disk. Enter the amount stated under “Maximum Size”. Click “Resize/Move”

How To Expand A VMware Disk - Choose New Size

9: Go to the “Edit” menu and select “Apply All Operations”. You will be prompted to see if you are certain, and click “Apply”.
It will take a while, so grab a cup of tea and watch an episode of Futurama.

How To Expand A VMware Disk - Apply All Operations

10: Once done, cick the start menu and click “Exit”. Type reboot at the console window.

How To Expand A VMware Disk - Exit

This should do it for Windows Server 2003, but unfortunately we aren’t done for Windows Server 2008 and Vista just yet. When you boot up Windows now you will get a nasty error that renders you unable to boot. I know you aren’t worried, since I promised you a link to a fix.

Here it is