Cannot change virtual disk size in a converted VM

[WarlockArg]

Hi, I have converted several physical machines into VMs using VM Converter. All off them were converted using the minimal size for their HDs in order that the convertion process last as few minutes as possible. Because now in all "C" drives of all those VMs there are only 1 Gb of free space I want to resize their virtual disks. The problem is that I can resize them to a larger size but Windows doesn't allow me to expand the volumen inside Windows. When I want to expand the volume size Windows shows me a message saying "The selected volume is a system disk or a boot disk, or it was created as a basic disk in a previous Windows version. It cannot be expanded".

I attach two files. The first one is the VM configuration. The second one is the error that appears inside Windows. The real message is in spanish cause Windows is in that languaje, but I have translated to english in the previous paragraph.

Does anybody of you know why this kind of errors appear? Is there any work around? It seems that the problem is because the Convert converted the HD as a basic virtual HD. In this format (basic) Windows doesn't allow to expand it. You have to change its format to dynamic in order to expand it, but when you try that error appeard.

The first work around I thought to do is to make an image of that disk with Ghost and try to paste that image in a new virtual machine hard disk, but I don't know if it's gonna work.

Thanks.

Warlock.

[Wimo]

Attach the disk to another VM, as a data drive. Use diskpart to extend the volume. Haven't done this in a while but I think the commands will be "list volume" which will show all the volumes; "select volume" choosing the one you need to extend; "extend" to extend it. If it works it will say it successfully extended the volume.

When you re-attach the disk to the original VM and boot it, C should now be the new size.

Of course, it would be a good idea to make a copy of the disk first... Either with vmkfstools -i or by just cloning the VM through VIC.

Message was edited by: Wimo

[kjb007]

I always use gparted for this type of task. 2008 lets you do this out of the box, but 2003, you need something else. You'll need a clean reboot, boot with gparted, adjust your partition, and then reboot the OS. The OS will boot into chkdsk, allow it to complete, and you should be good to go.

-KjB

[VMmatty · Accepted solution]

I've had success using Dell's ExtPart utility to resize boot volumes (C: drives) on the fly without downtime. The other methods like attaching the drive as a data volume to another server or using GParted require at least downtime of that VM and often downtime of more than one. With ExtPart I've been able to avoid that completely.

Check out this blog post for more info:

http://blogs.kraftkennedy.com/index.php/2009/06/30/expand-virtual-machine-boot-volumes-with-no-downt...