How to resize a VirtualBox vmdk file

Question

I've run out of space on a virtual machine disk which is a vmdk and need to resize the virtual image. Resizing with the command

vboxmanage modifyhd Machine-disk1.vmdk --resize 30720

gives the error

Progress state: VBOX_E_NOT_SUPPORTED
VBoxManage: error: Resize hard disk operation for this format is not implemented yet!

How can I resize a vmdk image?

Answer 1

I've got here because I needed to resize a disk for my Docker (CoreOS) development environment.

CoreOS docs says there's no need to resize the OS partition - that's bogus. After you resize the virtual disk you should follow these instructions and resize the OS partition via GParted:

https://docs.docker.com/articles/b2d_volume_resize/

Answer 2

Simply you have to follow the following steps:

1. Power off your machine.
2. Right click on virtual machine name > Settings > Storage
3. Click on Controller : SATA > Add Hard Disk.
4. Choose the new hard disk drive type size and hit create.
5. Discard the machine state.
6. Insert Ubuntu Live CD.
7. Boot from ubuntu live cd.
8. Open "gparted" (It's installed, not need to installation).
9. Check if the system see your new created hard disk.
10. Open Terminal.
11. Type the following code.
12. sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb (The first is the old partition path, the second is the new partition path).
13. Wait until its finish copying data (This step may take some time according to your host specs).
14. After finish copying, return to gparted and select refresh devices.
15. Select the new partition /dev/sdb it must be typical to the old one after doing dd command.
16. It'll show the expanded space as unlocated data.
17. Delete Swap partition/Extended partition.
18. Right click on root partition /dev/sdb > Resize
19. Allocate the whole space without swap allocation.
20. Create new extended partition > Choose extended > Create
21. Create new linux-swap partition > choose linux-swap > Create
22. Now turn off your running machine.
23. Right click on machine > settings > Storage.
24. Eject ubuntu live cd.
25. Right click on the old hard disk > remove attachment.
26. Now you can start your vm from the newly created hard disk.
27. Check the storage by enter df -kh command.
28. It must show you the new size.

Congratulation, enjoy your free space.
This video will help you: https://youtu.be/ikSIDI535L0

Answer 3

I have a Windows 7 client on a Mac host and this post was VERY helpful. Thanks.

I would add that I didn't use gparted. I did this:

1. Launch new enlarged vmdk image.
2. Go to Start and right click Computer and select Manage.
3. Click Disk Management
4. You should see some grayed space on your (in my case) C drive
5. Right click the C drive and select Extend Volume.
6. Choose size and go

Sweet! I preferred that to using a 3rd party tool with warnings about data loss.

Cheers!

Answer 4

Tried all the solutions here, but nothing seemed to work. After hours of digging I found this blog post and like magic everything works. I had to make little adjustments so here is the modified version. Tested with Docker version 17.06.0-ce, build 02c1d87.

Once developers really start containerising their applications, they often generate a large number of images and quickly fill up the 20GB hard drive space allocated to the Docker virtual machine by default. To make sure the Docker virtual machine has plenty of disk space, we should resize /dev/sda1 to a number that is more reasonable.

1. Download GParted Live CD/USB/HD/PXE Bootable Image.

2. Stop the Docker virtual machine docker-machine stop default.

3. Boot2Docker package installer ships with a VMDK volume, which VirtualBox’s native tools cannot resize. In order to resize the Docker disk volume, first clone the VDI volume from the default VMDK volume vboxmanage clonehd /full/path/to/disk.vmdk /full/path/to/disk_resized.vdi --format VDI --variant Standard.

4. Resize the newly cloned VDI volume to the desired capacity. We recommend at least 64GB vboxmanage modifyhd /full/path/to/disk_resized.vdi --resize <size in MB>.
5. Launch the VirtualBox application, select default VM and click on the “Settings” gear on top.
6. Click on the “Storage” icon. Remove the default VMDK volume.
7. Add a new IDE controller.
8. Mount the GParted ISO via the “Add CD/DVD Device” option.
9. Mount the cloned VDI volume via the “Add CD/DVD Device” option.
10. If you are running Docker on a computer with a solid-state hard drive, please make sure the “Solid-state Drive” option is selected for the cloned VDI volume.
11. Click on the “Start” icon to boot up the Docker virtual machine, which will launch the GParted ISO. Select “GParted Live (Default settings)”.
12. Set the policy for handling keymaps to “Don’t touch keymap”.
13. Set language preference to option “33”, which maps to “US English”.
14. Select option “1” to run “Forcevideo” and configure X manually.
15. Keep the default resolution of “1024×760” by selecting option “2”.
16. Keep the default “vesa” as the VGA card.
17. Keep the default colour depth of “24” by selecting option “0”.
18. Once GParted launches, click on the “Resize/Move” icon.
19. Set the new disk volume size to desired size by dragging the slider. In this example, the maximum size is 127,035MB. Click on the “Resize/Move” button to start the process.
20. Confirm the resizing operation by clicking on the “Apply” button.
21. Power off the machine after the resizing operation finishes.
22. Remove the GParted ISO.
23. Log into the Docker virtual machine to verify that the volume resizing was successful by starting machine docker-machine start default
24. If you experience network issues, restart the docker-machine

Answer 5

You can use Vmware player to resize a vmdk. This removes the round trip conversion (noted in other posts) if you want to keep it in vmdk format. Just make sure that when you add the vmdk into vmware, don't click upgrade format when prompted, keep the current one in case VirtualBox doesn't accept it.

Answer 6

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VirtualBox for Windows

Resizing your disk file while preserving your virtual machine settings!

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Step 1 - Resize the disk file

Start cmd.exe

cd to Oracle VM VirtualBox's dir (on 64-bit systems: "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\")

Run these commands (as above):

VBoxManage clonehd "C:\path\to\source.vmdk" "C:\path_to\cloned.vdi" --format vdi
VBoxManage modifyhd "C:\path\to\cloned.vdi" --resize 51200

Windows explorer and "copy address as text" via the address bar should help you get the path you need.

On windows system, The VirtaulBox VM directory underneath your user may contain an XML formatted database file of settings you've configured for your VM. Rename this file, with a .bak extension (it has a .vbox extension). Rename the original .vmdk file with a .bak extension as well to avoid another error. You can now safetly perform the third step without the error message to convert the machine back to .vmdk format, or the "duplicate disk" error.

VBoxManage clonehd "C:\path_to\cloned.vdi" "C:\path_to\source.vmdk" --format vmdk

You will be presented with a UID token. Copy this token by drag-highlighting it from the Windows Command Interpetor window and using the Ctrl+C keyboard shortcut.

Open the .vbox.bak file in a text editor such as Notepad++. You'll be presented with an XML-like database file. Look for these lines:

<VirtualBox xmlns="http://www.virtualbox.org/" version="1.16-windows">
  <Machine uuid="{some uid}" name="source disk name" OSType="the_vbox_OS" snapshotFolder="Snapshots" lastStateChange="2043-03-23T00:54:18Z">
    <MediaRegistry>
      <HardDisks>
        <HardDisk uuid="{some uid}" location="C:\path_to\source.vmdk" ...

On the line <HardDisk uuid="{some uid}" location="C:\path_to\source.vmdk" ..., delete the old UID token between the brackets and paste the one you copied from the command window. Make sure that you leave the brackets in place!

Save this file, and exit your text editor. Rename the .vbox.bak file to give it back its expected extension of .vbox.

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Step 2 - Remove the junk

It is now safe to remove the .bak files remaining in the directory. What remains is a resized .vmdk with an updated .vbox database while with your previously preserved VirtualBox Manager settings.

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Step 3 - Resize the disk's partition to fill the free space

You can now start the VirtualBox VM Manager and execute your VM, using the appropriate tools for the operating system to fill the new free space.

For Windows VMs, use diskpart from the command prompt booted from the Windows Recovery Consule (recovery partition) to SELECT DISK 1, LIST PARTITION and gather the partition number of your C:\ drive, then SELECT PARTITION #. You can use the EXTEND SIZE=mb to resize the Windows C:\ drive to the appropriate value. Make sure you leave room for the recovery and boot partitions! It's safe to subtract 4096 MB from your new virtual disk size to get this value, because of shadow copy and windows recovery files.

For Linux VMs, a live .ISO of gparted you can boot with the VM's disk file can be found at: http://gparted.org/ It will get you straight into a graphical user interface-based gparted-gtk, from where you can fill your free space.

For PPC / Mac VMs, Disk Utility from the Finder will asisst you in filling the free space, but you may want to consider the gparted Linux option, as currently the only method of which to boot MacOSX in VirtualBox is hackintosh, and you cannot extend your volume while booted into MacOSX. You may also want to seek out tweaking the VM's settings temporarily for gparted, to get it to boot. MacOSX partitions are recognized by gparted as HFS - "Heaping File System" partitions.

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Step 4 - Cat Photos

Because the internet. ;) You're finished. Enjoy your new resized virtual .vmdk disk image with VirtualBox for Windows!