How can I easily add storage to a VirtualBox machine with XP installed

Question

When I installed Windows XP on a VirtualBox machine  I made the hard drive only 10 GB since and assumed it would expand in size  as do hard drives in VMWare as far as I can remember  isn t this true     In any case  I m trying to install Visual Studio 2010 beta on this Virtual Box XP image and it has run out of disk space   Googling for an answer  I m finding complicated tutorials like this which show you how to increase the size of a VirtualBox hard drive  in just a couple hours     But I can t imagine it would be that hard to either    increase the size of a virtual disk  after all  it is virtual  create a new hard drive of  say  20 GB and just attach it in the virtual machine as the D  or E  drive   How can I easily add storage space to a VirtualBox machine with XP installed

User · Answer

Take a look at CloneVDI from the VirtualBox site    100  painless

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i used following instructions  its so easy to increase virtual box disk size  http   blog bhupen me 1 post 2011 09 increase-virtualbox-disk-size html

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For windows users   cd    C  Program Files Oracle VirtualBox    VBoxManage modifyhd    C  Users Chris VirtualBox VMs Windows 7 Windows 7 vdi    --resize 81920   http   www howtogeek com 124622 how-to-enlarge-a-virtual-machines-disk-in-virtualbox-or-vmware

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Step 1   create new virtual disk as per  mhaller instruction  Step 2   Open Run dialog box type diskmgmt msc and enter  Step 3   Select uninitialized partition  right click- initialize  Step 4   Select the partition again  right click and create extended partition  again right click create logical drive  adjust the partition size if you need in wizard   Thats all

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Newer versions of VirtualBox add an option for VBoxManage clonehd that allows you to clone to an existing  larger  virtual disk     The process is detailed here  Expanding VirtualBox Dynamic VDIs

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The problem is that the file system on that disk was created when the disk had a certain geometry and you must modify it  while your OS is running on it    So yes  making the virtual hard disk bigger is not a big issue  The issue is to make the new space available to your OS  To do that  you need tools like parted  Linux  or Partition Magic  Windows

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After resizing and not being able to view the resizing on my windows XP guest machine  I had to    clone it resize it with   VBoxManage modifyhd winxppro  Clone vdi --resize 30720  and everything worked   I saw in other forums that snapshots can interfere for resizing and not being able to remove all snapshots for different errors I got  the only found solution for me was to clone it to remove the snapshots and then resize it  and everything worked  For resizing outside windows  a gparted boot cd that can be found here can help

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Taked from here    forums virtualbox org viewtopic php p 41118 p41118  You could try something like this  see also Tutorial - All about VDIs  How can I resize the partitions inside my VDI       Create a new VDI of the desired size  Boot GParted Live in a VM with both old and new VDIs attached  Check in the partition editor  opened automatically after booting  what your old and new disk locations are   It ll be something like  dev hda and  dev hdb   Copy contents from old to new disk  This will take a fair amount of time   Here  dev hdX is your original disk and  dev hdY the new one    dd if  dev hdX of  dev hdY  Warning  Make sure you do not mix up your input and output disks or you ll wipe all information from your original disk   if  specifies the input and of  specifies the output   Reboot  again with GParted-Live   Now you should be able to increase the Windows partition size on the new disk    Once you ve verified the larger VDI boots Windows fine  and disk size is as you d expect  you can of course delete the old smaller VDI    Edit  Instead of rebooting before you resize the partition you should be able to run partprobe and the hit CTRL R in GParted instead

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Note  This applies to pre-4 VirtualBox  In VB4  HDD expansion has been introduced   According to the VirtualBox documentation      When creating an image  its size needs to be specified    which determines this fixed geometry  It is therefore not possible to change the size of   the virtual hard disk later    So  the easiest way to add additional space to an existing VM is to attach a second hard disk  Go to the VM Settings   Hard Disks   Add New  Then  click the  Select Hard Drive  button and click on  New   Follow the wizard to create a new virtual hard disk  It will then show up as D  or E  in your guest OS

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These steps worked for me to increase the space on my windows VM    Clone the current VM and select  Full Clone  when prompted       Resize the VDI   VBoxManage modifyhd Cloned vdi --resize 45000 Run your cloned VM  go to Disk Management and extend the volume

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I am glad you were able to get this done in this manner  but you can  and I did  use the GParted tool for my Windows XP host by following the helpful entry by Eric   To re-iterate expand on his solution  don t be afraid of the   steps  I m trying to help newbies here  so there are necessarily more detailed instructions      change the size of the virtual hard disk via the VBoxManage modifyhd command  which is well-documented here and in the VirtualBox documentation  download the GParted-live  http   sourceforge net projects gparted files latest download source dlp  or search the internet for GParted-live ISO   The important part is to get the live   iso  verison  which is in the form of a bootable  ISO  CD  image  Mount this new  ISO to the CD virtual drive in the host machine s Storage settings If necessary desired  change the boot order in the System settings for the host machine  to boot from CD before Hard Disk  alternatively  you can press F12 when it s booting up  and select the device  start your VM  if you changed the boot order  it will boot to the GParted-live ISO  otherwise press F12 to do this  do not be afraid or get too confused wrapped up in the initial options you are presented  I selected all the defaults  booting to GParted default  default key mapping  language  assuming English - sorry for my non-English friends    display  etc     Read it  but just press enter at each prompt   With a Windows VM you should be fine with all the defaults  and if you re not  you re not going to break anything  and the instructions are pretty good about what to do if the defaults don t work  it will boot to a GUI environment and start the GParted utility   Highlight the c  drive  assuming that s the drive you want to increase the size on  and select resize move  change to the new size you want in MB  they abbreviate MiB  - just add the new amount available  represented in the bottom number - MiB following  to the middle number   E g  I changed mine from like 4000 MiB  e g   4GB - my initial size  to 15000 MiB  15 GB  because I d added 10 GB to my virtual disk   Then click OK  Click Apply   Once it s done you ll have to reboot - for whatever reason my mouse did not work on the desktop icons on the GUI  I could not click exit  so I just closed the VM window and selected reboot   I did not even have to unmount the ISO  it apparently did it automatically  Let Windows go through the disk check - remember  you just changed the size outside of Windows  so it has no record of this   This will presumably allow it to update itself with the new info   Once it completes and you log in  you ll likely be told that Windows needs to reboot to use your  new device   at least in XP it did for me    Just reboot and you are done

User · Answer

Adding a second drive is probably easiest  That would only take a few minutes  and it wouldn t require any configuration  really   Alternatively  you could create the second  bigger drive  then run a disk imaging utility to copy all data on disk1 to disk2  That certainly shouldn t take a few hours  but it would take longer than just living with two drives

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For Windows users there s an additional user friendly option  CloneVDI Tool by mpack  It s a GUI front-end to VBoxManage that makes things a little easier to work with   http   forums virtualbox org viewtopic php f 6 amp t 22422  As Alexander M  mentioned  you ll still have to use GParted  Partition Magic or a similar partition editor to grow your partition to the newly allocated physical drive  To do this just download the GParted iso  mount it as a bootable drive in the VirtualBox and boot from it   http   gparted sourceforge net download php

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I found this nugget at the link following   It worked perfect for me and only took 5 seconds   As of VirtualBox 4 they added support for expansion    VBoxManage modifyhd filename vdi --resize 46080   That will resize a virtual disk image to 45GB   https   superuser com questions 172651 increasing-disk-space-on-virtualbox

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If you want to resize a fixed size disk  or want to USE the resized disk  VBoxManage modifyhd filename vdi --resize 99999   won t work  It supports only dynamic disks  Even for a dynamic disk  you ll have to resize the partitions    Make a backup copy of your VM   you have to go to VirtualBox manager  File-VirtualMediaManager   There copy your virtual disk to another one  Make it dynamic while copying  Go to your machine  Settings - Storage  Link to the new disk  Return to VirtualMediaManager  Release  the old disk  NOW make resize with the new disk  as       VBoxManage modifyhd filename vdi --resize 99999     Resize partitions on the new disk   download live Linux or live GParted iso   In VirtualBox manager - settings - Storage - CD s add this iso  VirtualBox manager - settings - system set loading from CD launch VM  launch sudo gparted  right click swap partition  UNSWAP it  Move right border of the extended partition with swap up to the right  Move swap to the right Move left border of the extended partition up to the right Move right border of YOUR partition up to the right  Close VM Remove CD from VM  check how it works Close VM remove the old disk in VirtualMediaManager    Here you are

[storage] How can I easily add storage to a VirtualBox machine with XP installed?

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