Split disk larger than 2gb

[daniel341]

I followed VMware KB: Changing a monolithic disk to a split disk in VMware Workstation to do split disk to my VM.

Why are the files that got created bigger than 2GB?

It created a lot of files but most of them was small and then 2-3 was pretty big.

[wila · Accepted solution]

Hi Daniel,

This has changed in recent versions of VMware Workstation and Fusion.

Split disks now are limited to 4GB when the virtual disk is smaller or equal to 128 GB, if you virtual disk is larger as that then it can even grow beyond that size.

See https://communities.vmware.com/thread/498924 for more info.

--

Wil

[daniel341]

Oh, okey.

So for a 1TB disk the files will be up to 31,25GB?

[wila]

Hi,

Yes, for a 1TB virtual disk, the split disk parts can grow up to (1024/32) = 32GB.

--

Wil

[daniel341]

Okey, so the only way to get it down in size is to shrink the virtual disk?

[wila]

Hi,

Umm..  shrink?

Shrink in VMware terminology is used for zero-ing out the empty blocks from a virtual disk and reclaim that space to be available the host operating system's disk system.

If your virtual split disk is on a disk that has not much empty blocks, there's not much to reclaim and it won't reclaim anything.

Shrink in non VMware specific disk/partition terminology would mean you just resize the partition to something smaller.

A virtual disk however cannot be made smaller... Resizing the partition doesn't empty out the blocks used so if you would resize the partition you can't even reclaim the space that isn't used (as is described in the previous paragraph)

There's a few ways to have your VM use a smaller disk,  the easiest way I think is to use a Linux live CD and clone the larger virtual disk to a smaller virtual disk.

If you use SystemRecCD, you can basically just start gparted, copy a partition and paste the partition on the smaller virtual disk.

But if you feel adventurous there are other ways, see also this recent thread for details:

How to shrink a virtual disk (vmdk file)

--

Wil

[daniel341]

Alright, thanks for the help!

[DavidHochhauser]

Is there any way to configure it to make the file splits back to 2GB?  I want to keep my file sizes manageable.

Regards

Dave H.

[wila]

Hi Dave,

From https://communities.vmware.com/thread/498924

The split disk scheme since VMware Fusion 7 (or VMware Workstation 11) is:

Capacity                    Extent size
================================ 
<=128GB                  4GB (increased from 2GB) 
>128GB && <2TB     Capacity / 32 (so maximum of 32 extents) 
>=2TB                       2TB 

So keeping the virtual disk size under 128GB would at least keep the slices under 4GB.

Which would mean that you can save those virtual disks still on FAT32.

If you insist on wanting the 2GB split disk then the only thing I can come up with is to try and set the virtual hardware version to version 10 (or earlier)

But I don't know if that will help (I have not tested that) and if it would actually change the split disk size on an existing disk.

I can imagine that you have to clone the VM or something along those lines to force it to use smaller split sizes.

--

Wil

[continuum]

Use the multiple expands approach. Best by creating a batchfile.
Create one-piece 2 gb vmdk. Expand it to 4gb, expand to 6gb and so on.
The disks created that way are valid in WS12.0 if you use -t 1
See VMDK-Handbook-Basics

Here is an example for such a batch - but for 670MBslices. Adjust accordingly ....

See the follwing example

vmware-vdiskmanager -c -a ide -s 670Mb -t 1 cd-slices-disk.vmdk
vmware-vdiskmanager -x 1340Mb cd-slices-disk.vmdk
vmware-vdiskmanager -x 2010Mb cd-slices-disk.vmdk
vmware-vdiskmanager -x 2680Mb cd-slices-disk.vmdk
vmware-vdiskmanager -x 3350Mb cd-slices-disk.vmdk
vmware-vdiskmanager -x 4020Mb cd-slices-disk.vmdk
vmware-vdiskmanager -x 4690Mb cd-slices-disk.vmdk

EDIT:  not tested with all vmdk-types and NOT tested with WS14