Is there a way to clone a VM to one with a Bigger V-Disk ?

[rchin]

WS 6.0.3-80004

Host: Vista SP1 - Guests: Ubuntu 8.04, XP

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I have a XP v-machine, only sized 3 GB

Is there a way to clone it to one with a bigger v-disk ?

thanks

[rchin]

is this the best/only way ?

[wila]

Hi,

You can also resize the virtual disk itself.

First take a backup of your virtual machine while it is shutdown (preferably with VMware workstation closed)

Then go to settings, select your virtual disk and you should be able to increase the size from 3GB to something bigger. At least you will have this option in the latest version of VMware workstation.

Beware that you can only increase the size.

After increasing the size of your virtual disk you still must increase the size of your disk in the virtual machine.. the partition is still sized as big as the old disk. In the case of XP you will have to use a helper VM or a liveCD in order to resize the partition.

See here for details: http://www.vmware-land.com/Resizing_Virtual_Disks.html

With workstation 6.0.3, I"m afraid that you can only use the command line vmware-vdiskmanager.

vmware-vdiskmanager -x 10GB virtualdisk.vmdk

the code above will increase your virtual disk to 10GB

--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

Visit the new VMware developers wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

[rchin]

Then go to settings, select your virtual disk and you should be able to increase the size from 3GB to something bigger.

At least you will have this option in the latest version of VMware workstation.

Can't do this in 6.0.3 :(. thanks your answer and provided link is very helpful

[continuum]

you can't do this because you still have a snpashot - get rid of it first

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description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

[wila]

you can't do this because you still have a snpashot - get rid of it first

Hi Ulli.. very sharp... good catch!

--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

Visit the new VMware developers wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

[continuum]

it still should work - even with a snapshot - there is still something wrong.

But in this case this was a lucky incident - if he had enlarged the disk with snaoshot he would really have a problem :smileycool:

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description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

[rchin]

you can't do this because you still have a snpashot - get rid of it first

OK, no mo' Snapshots

But still does not seem to have the option to resize vmdk (WS 6.0.3)

[continuum]

Ok - looks good now

which commandline did yoy tried ?

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description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

[rchin]

which commandline did yoy tried ?

well...none.

You tell me what to do

[continuum]

Open a cmd - change directory to the directory where your VM lives and type

"C:\program files\vmware\vmware workstation\vmware-vdiskmanager" -x 10Gb "Windows XP Professional.vmdk"

Before you do that ... you are aware that after that command you have to use a tool like partition magic or a LiveCD like BartPE or gparted to enlarge the partition ?

If you do not know what I am talking about running the command makes no sense.

It will only resize the disk - not the Windows partition !!!

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description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

[rchin]

Open a cmd - change directory to the directory where your VM lives and type....

ah ok, I read about this (rather complicated, IMO) method in my subsequent search.

Nah, this seems like a pain-in-the-***

I think I will go with peter_vm's suggestion --- let Converter clone the v-machine with a bigger vmdk.

So far this seems to be the easiest method. Guess this is why he suggested this way in several posts.

Thanks

[continuum]

You now have an IDE -disk - Converter will change that to SCSI - so your VM is messed up when you do not have a volume license - but yeah - thats the easiest way.

I wish folks would stop to recommend Converter for disk-resizing

IMHO the easiest way is to add a disk - boot into a ghost or Acronis or Knoppix CD and clone old-small disk into big-new disk.

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description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

[rchin]

You now have an IDE -disk - Converter will change that to SCSI - so your VM is messed up when you do not have a volume license - but yeah - thats the easiest way.

damn...you're right. Good thing I made sure the XP is corp license when I "looked for" it

IMHO the easiest way is to add a disk - boot into a ghost or Acronis or Knoppix CD and clone old-small disk into big-new disk.

I can also just add another vmdk to the v-machine right ? so the new disk will be seen as "D:" right ?

thanks

[continuum]

Sure - another thing I often do to easily enlarge Windows disks is adding a second disk and use diskmanagement to mount the second disk to a directory in C:\ - the Linux folks do that all the time ....

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description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

[wila]

Hi,

I can also just add another vmdk to the v-machine right ? so the new disk will be seen as "D:" right ?

Yes you can. You can also temporarily add a SCSI disk there and already install the SCSI drivers so that your VM works with SCSI disks before running converter and drop the extra disk again after running converter to resize your C disk.

There's many ways to Rome...

--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

Visit the new VMware developers wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

[wila]

the Linux folks do that all the time ....

Hey.. speak for yourself It's not exactly the same thing as we do not have a "C Drive" (partition really) within linux so there's not an option.. under *nix it is good practice to use a split partition setup and isolate things like "/home" and "/opt", "/var" and optionally "/boot" into separate partitions (which may be on another disk)

With linux it actually makes life easier. With windows not always as it has the concept of different drives and software always wants to install on C:\ and alot of software still puts data down there even if you tell it not to do so. .. It is usually 3rd party fault, although MS has a tendency of overloading your C:\ drive as well (Well office 2003 did, never installed the 2007 version)

--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

Visit the new VMware developers wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

[wila]

This works really well for Windows Vista, 2008 and Windows 7 as they have a partitioning tool aboard and can even partition (extend) the system drive while it is running. Truly an amazing trick...

--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

Visit the new VMware developers wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com