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fafa24
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Decrease virtual disk size (not vmdk)

Hello,

We have a Windows Server 2016 which has a second virtual disk of 2TB. I wanted to give it more space, so I added another TB, Total 3TB.

Unfortunately in Windows Server, I cannot allocate the new space since the volume is an MBR partition. I know there are some tools to convert MBR to GPT without losing data.

I would like to undo the increase in the virtual disk. Can I just go back to the virtual machine configuration and change the value from 3TB to 2TB without losing any data?

For better understanding, I add two screenshots - Windows Server disk management or Vcenter VM configuration.

Thanks,

Edy

6 Replies
Alex_Romeo
Leadership
Leadership

Hi,

I did a test on the fly. I created a 40 GB disk, copied some data and then added 10 GB. I reopened "Edit" and set the size to 40 GB. This is the result:

pastedImage_1.png

pastedImage_0.png

ARomeo

Blog: https://www.aleadmin.it/
fafa24
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thank you for the test. So it is unfortunately not possible to reduce the size.

Any other ideas?

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

You can cut off the added space with dd

How to use dd to work with VMDKs stored on VMFS | VM-Sickbay


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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Alex_Romeo
Leadership
Leadership

Hi,

Okay Continuum's answer

continuum

ARomeo

Blog: https://www.aleadmin.it/
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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

> Okay Continuum's answer

???


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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sjesse
Leadership
Leadership

As an alternative to dd like was mentioned is you can use VMware converter, which is the safest way to shrink it.

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