How to resize a VirtualBox vmdk file

Question

I ve run out of space on a virtual machine disk which is a vmdk and need to resize the virtual image  Resizing with the command   vboxmanage modifyhd Machine-disk1 vmdk --resize 30720   gives the error   Progress state  VBOX E NOT SUPPORTED VBoxManage  error  Resize hard disk operation for this format is not implemented yet    How can I resize a vmdk image

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VirtualBox for Windows  Resizing your disk file while preserving your virtual machine settings     Step 1 - Resize the disk file  Start cmd exe  cd to Oracle VM VirtualBox s dir  on 64-bit systems    C  Program Files Oracle VirtualBox     Run these commands  as above    VBoxManage clonehd  C  path to source vmdk   C  path to cloned vdi  --format vdi VBoxManage modifyhd  C  path to cloned vdi  --resize 51200   Windows explorer and  copy address as text  via the address bar should help you get the path you need   On windows system  The VirtaulBox VM directory underneath your user may contain an XML formatted database file of settings you ve configured for your VM   Rename this file  with a  bak extension  it has a  vbox extension   Rename the original  vmdk file with a  bak extension as well to avoid another error   You can now safetly perform the third step without the error message to convert the machine back to  vmdk format  or the  duplicate disk  error   VBoxManage clonehd  C  path to cloned vdi   C  path to source vmdk  --format vmdk   You will be presented with a UID token   Copy this token by drag-highlighting it from the Windows Command Interpetor window and using the Ctrl C keyboard shortcut   Open the  vbox bak file in a text editor such as Notepad     You ll be presented with an XML-like database file   Look for these lines    lt VirtualBox xmlns  http   www virtualbox org   version  1 16-windows  gt     lt Machine uuid   some uid   name  source disk name  OSType  the vbox OS  snapshotFolder  Snapshots  lastStateChange  2043-03-23T00 54 18Z  gt       lt MediaRegistry gt         lt HardDisks gt           lt HardDisk uuid   some uid   location  C  path to source vmdk        On the line  lt HardDisk uuid   some uid   location  C  path to source vmdk       delete the old UID token between the brackets and paste the one you copied from the command window   Make sure that you leave the brackets in place   Save this file  and exit your text editor   Rename the  vbox bak file to give it back its expected extension of  vbox     Step 2 - Remove the junk  It is now safe to remove the  bak files remaining in the directory   What remains is a resized  vmdk with an updated  vbox database while with your previously preserved VirtualBox Manager settings     Step 3 - Resize the disk s partition to fill the free space  You can now start the VirtualBox VM Manager and execute your VM  using the appropriate tools for the operating system to fill the new free space   For Windows VMs  use diskpart from the command prompt booted from the Windows Recovery Consule  recovery partition  to SELECT DISK 1  LIST PARTITION and gather the partition number of your C   drive  then SELECT PARTITION     You can use the EXTEND SIZE mb to resize the Windows C   drive to the appropriate value   Make sure you leave room for the recovery and boot partitions   It s safe to subtract 4096 MB from your new virtual disk size to get this value  because of shadow copy and windows recovery files   For Linux VMs  a live  ISO of gparted you can boot with the VM s disk file can be found at   http   gparted org   It will get you straight into a graphical user interface-based gparted-gtk  from where you can fill your free space     For PPC   Mac VMs  Disk Utility from the Finder will asisst you in filling the free space  but you may want to consider the gparted Linux option  as currently the only method of which to boot MacOSX in VirtualBox is hackintosh  and you cannot extend your volume while booted into MacOSX   You may also want to seek out tweaking the VM s settings temporarily for gparted  to get it to boot   MacOSX partitions are recognized by gparted as HFS -  Heaping File System  partitions     Step 4 - Cat Photos  Because the internet       You re finished   Enjoy your new resized virtual  vmdk disk image with VirtualBox for Windows

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I ve got here because I needed to resize a disk for my Docker  CoreOS  development environment   CoreOS docs says there s no need to resize the OS partition - that s bogus  After you resize the virtual disk you should follow these instructions and resize the OS partition via GParted    https   docs docker com articles b2d volume resize

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You can use Vmware player to resize a vmdk   This removes the round trip conversion  noted in other posts  if you want to keep it in vmdk format  Just make sure that when you add the vmdk into vmware  don t click upgrade format when prompted  keep the current one in case VirtualBox doesn t accept it

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vmdk s    Rather fixed size allocation  step 1 2   Even after expansion  not readily available inside the vmdk s OS  step 3 4 5   STEPS  1  convert to  quot  vdi quot  first - VBoxManage clonehd v1 vmdk v1 vdi --format vdi 2  expand the size using command-line  Ref  tvial s blog for step by step info  OR expand from the Virtual Media Manager in VirtualBox    NOW - INSIDE VM   3  Expand the size of drive  with new allocation  e g  for Ubuntu running on virtual-machine   use GParted    4  Extend the filesystem - lvextend -L  50G  lt file-system-identifier gt  ILLUSTRATION    lsblk NAME                       MAJ MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT     sda                          8 0    0   200G  0 disk   -sda1                       8 1    0   200G  0 part     -myfs-vg-cloud          253 0    0    99G  0 lvm       -myfs-vg-swap-1         253 1    0   980M  0 lvm   SWAP      lvextend -L  100G  dev mapper myfs-vg-cloud    lsblk NAME                       MAJ MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT     sda                          8 0    0   200G  0 disk   -sda1                       8 1    0   200G  0 part     -myfs-vg-cloud          253 0    0   199G  0 lvm       -myfs-vg-swap-1         253 1    0   980M  0 lvm   SWAP   5  Extend the  quot  home quot  - resize2fs  lt file-system-identifier gt  ILLUSTRATION    df -h  home  Filesystem                        Size  Used Avail Use  Mounted on  dev mapper myfs-vg-cloud         97G   87G  6 0G  94         resize2fs  dev mapper myfs-vg-cloud    df -h  home  Filesystem                        Size  Used Avail Use  Mounted on  dev mapper myfs-vg-cloud         196G   87G  101G  47      Your system must now be ready to use  with extended allocations

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Simply you have to follow the following steps    Power off your machine  Right click on virtual machine name   Settings   Storage Click on Controller   SATA   Add Hard Disk  Choose the new hard disk drive type size and hit create  Discard the machine state  Insert Ubuntu Live CD  Boot from ubuntu live cd  Open  gparted   It s installed  not need to installation   Check if the system see your new created hard disk  Open Terminal  Type the following code  sudo dd if  dev sda of  dev sdb  The first is the old partition path  the second is the new partition path   Wait until its finish copying data  This step may take some time according to your host specs   After finish copying  return to gparted and select refresh devices  Select the new partition  dev sdb it must be typical to the old one after doing dd command  It ll show the expanded space as unlocated data  Delete Swap partition Extended partition  Right click on root partition  dev sdb   Resize Allocate the whole space without swap allocation  Create new extended partition   Choose extended   Create Create new linux-swap partition   choose linux-swap   Create Now turn off your running machine  Right click on machine   settings   Storage  Eject ubuntu live cd  Right click on the old hard disk   remove attachment  Now you can start your vm from the newly created hard disk  Check the storage by enter df -kh command  It must show you the new size    Congratulation  enjoy your free space  This video will help you  https   youtu be ikSIDI535L0

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Here s a way to resize your VirtualBox disk  regardless of whether it is a fixed format or dynamic format disk  Specifically  it prevents the error you had when you disk is fixed-format           Backup the virtual disk  You never know what might go wrong    On your host    Open a terminal window      On Windows  Open the command prompt cmd   Go to the directory with the virtual disk you want to resize  For example   cd  My VMs   Create a new VirtualBox disk with your desired filename  size  in megabytes  and format  either Standard  dynamic  or Fixed   For example  to create a 50 GB fixed-format disk called MyNewDisk vdi   VBoxManage createmedium --filename  MyNewDisk vdi  --size 50000 --variant Fixed      If VBoxManage is not recognized as a command  specify the full path to it  It can be found in the VirtualBox installation directory  On Windows the above command would become    C  Program Files Oracle VirtualBox VBoxManage exe  createmedium     --filename  MyNewDisk vdi  --size 50000 --variant Fixed   Copy the original disk to the new disk   VBoxManage clonemedium  MyOriginalDisk vdi   MyNewDisk vdi  --existing  The resize is done  You can check the properties of the new disk if you want   VBoxManage showmediuminfo  MyNewDisk vdi   Change the virtual machine to use the new disk instead    Next  on your guest OS you need to resize the partitions to use the newly available space

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Download Install Use VMWare Workstation and create new VM Based on your current vmdk file and then you can resize your vmdk  For details regarding this matter google for VMWare

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If you want to end having back a vmdk hard disk  maybe you are interested in using the disk in vwmare too   the complete steps are   VBoxManage clonemedium  source vmdk   cloned vdi  --format vdi VBoxManage modifymedium  cloned vdi  --resize 51200 VBoxManage clonemedium  cloned vdi   resized vmdk  --format vmdk   The above will resize the hard disk up to 50GB  50   1024MB     To complete things you need to resize the drive too  To achieve this  you might want to download gparted iso and boot from that iso to resize your drive  select the iso from within the virtualbox settings    P S  If your new size is too small  you ll get the same error even with your new vdi file

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Throw it away and start again  Ignore all these answers - don t waste your time

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As mentioned in the answer by Luca the required steps are    Clone the VMDK image to VDI format  VBoxManage clonehd  source vmdk   cloned vdi  --format vdi Resize the VDI image  VBoxManage modifyhd  cloned vdi  --resize 51200 Clone back to VMDK format  VBoxManage clonehd  cloned vdi   resized vmdk  --format vmdk   Step 3 is optional if you can use a VDI image instead   All these steps can be carried out in the VirtualBox graphical user interface as well  under File - gt  Virtual Media Manager  Select the drive you want to clone  and then choose Copy  A dialog opens that allows you to choose the disk format and options  To resize a VDI image  just use the slider in the bottom  click on Properties if it s not visible    Finally  you may need to change the disk size in the guest OS as well    Run the guest OS and resize the disk partition s   If you are running Linux  you can use gparted or kparted

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Use these simple steps to resize the vmdk  Go to File - gt  Virtual Media Player    Select vdi file and click properties   Here you can increase or decrease the vdi size

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Tried all the solutions here  but nothing seemed to work  After hours of digging I found this blog post and like magic everything works  I had to make little adjustments so here is the modified version  Tested with Docker version 17 06 0-ce  build 02c1d87   Once developers really start containerising their applications  they often generate a large number of images and quickly fill up the 20GB hard drive space allocated to the Docker virtual machine by default  To make sure the Docker virtual machine has plenty of disk space  we should resize  dev sda1 to a number that is more reasonable    Download GParted Live CD USB HD PXE Bootable Image  Stop the Docker virtual machine docker-machine stop default  Boot2Docker package installer ships with a VMDK volume  which VirtualBox   s native tools cannot resize  In order to resize the Docker disk volume  first clone the VDI volume from the default VMDK volume vboxmanage clonehd  full path to disk vmdk  full path to disk resized vdi --format VDI --variant Standard  Resize the newly cloned VDI volume to the desired capacity  We recommend at least 64GB vboxmanage modifyhd  full path to disk resized vdi --resize  lt size in MB gt   Launch the VirtualBox application  select default VM and click on the    Settings    gear on top  Click on the    Storage    icon  Remove the default VMDK volume  Add a new IDE controller  Mount the GParted ISO via the    Add CD DVD Device    option  Mount the cloned VDI volume via the    Add CD DVD Device    option  If you are running Docker on a computer with a solid-state hard drive  please make sure the    Solid-state Drive    option is selected for the cloned VDI volume  Click on the    Start    icon to boot up the Docker virtual machine  which will launch the GParted ISO  Select    GParted Live  Default settings      Set the policy for handling keymaps to    Don   t touch keymap     Set language preference to option    33     which maps to    US English     Select option    1    to run    Forcevideo    and configure X manually  Keep the default resolution of    1024  760    by selecting option    2     Keep the default    vesa    as the VGA card  Keep the default colour depth of    24    by selecting option    0      Once GParted launches  click on the    Resize Move    icon  Set the new disk volume size to desired size by dragging the slider  In this example  the maximum size is 127 035MB  Click on the    Resize Move    button to start the process  Confirm the resizing operation by clicking on the    Apply    button  Power off the machine after the resizing operation finishes  Remove the GParted ISO  Log into the Docker virtual machine to verify that the volume resizing was successful by starting machine docker-machine start default  If you experience network issues  restart the docker-machine

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I have a Windows 7 client on a Mac host and this post was VERY helpful  Thanks    I would add that I didn t use gparted  I did this    Launch new enlarged vmdk image      Go to Start and right click Computer and select Manage  Click Disk Management You should see some grayed space on your  in my case  C drive Right click the C drive and select Extend Volume  Choose size and go    Sweet  I preferred that to using a 3rd party tool with warnings about data loss   Cheers

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A quick and simple option    Turn off machine Create new virtual box disk with desired size Move content from old disk to inside new disk   vboxmanage clonehd  source-disk vmdk   new-disk vmdk  --existing  Turn on machine You may have to resize partition in OS to fill the rest of the disk     Warning  If new disk is shorter than source  you will loss the data located from the new disk size position on the source disk   You may prevent this deallocating delta space  where delta   size source-disk  - size new-disk   at the end of source disk inside OS before step 1

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For shrinking image size I use the following steps    On the client machine cat  dev zero  gt  z sync sleep 3 sync rm -f z Shut down client machine On the host VBoxManage clonehd  source vmdk   cloned vdi  --format vdi On the host VBoxManage modifyhd cloned vdi --compact On the host VBoxManage clonehd  cloned vdi   resized vmdk  --format vmdk

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I was able to resize the vmdk by cloning it and then modifying and resizing   vboxmanage clonehd  virtualdisk vmdk   new-virtualdisk vdi  --format vdi vboxmanage modifyhd  new-virtualdisk vdi  --resize 30720

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Actually  Only this these commands are needed   VBoxManage clonehd  source vmdk   cloned vdi  --format vdi VBoxManage modifyhd  cloned vdi  --resize 51200   Then  you can select cloned dvi in Virtualbox GUI storage    After that  start the virtual windows and expand your C disk as the methods of Code Chops   It is not necessary to convert the   vdi file to   vmdk file back

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Since this is a vmdk file  you could use VMWare s vdiskmanager  if it s available for your platform  VMWare has x86 Linux  Windows  and OS X versions here  see  quot Attachments quot  on the right rail   And then you just do  1023856-vdiskmanager-windows-7 0 1 exe -x 30720M Machine-disk1 vmdk  It avoids having to clone  then expand the disk  Now  the downside is you need the extra tool  and vmdk is VMWare s disk format  and you re still using Virtualbox  so there could be incompatibilities  qemu-img might also work  but I m not sure if it supports resizing vmdk files  It would look something like  qemu-img resize Machine-disk1 vmdk  8G  And just a reminder  with both  you still have to grow the partition after resizing the underlying disk  All these tools are essentially dd if  dev old disk of  dev new disk bs 16M

[virtualbox] How to resize a VirtualBox vmdk file

Step 1 - Resize the disk file

Step 2 - Remove the junk

Step 3 - Resize the disk's partition to fill the free space

Step 4 - Cat Photos

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