Dynamically Expanding File not working...

[geekygreen]

I just installed Virtual Box on a Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn) machine, and created a VM with WIN XP Pro. (How I love to see the redmond software being controlled by an overlord.....)

However, when I created the VM I chose the Dynamically expanding option, which started out at 1.95G. Before installation of XP was complete, the guest OS is reporting HD Full....only 14MB available...and the dynamic resizing has not happened.

Elsewhere in the host machine, in the VBox window somewhere, it reports that only about 1.4G is being used...(which is probably why it hasnt resized) but withing the VM it cannot download the XP patches etc because there is not enough room...

Is there a secret to making sure the dynamic resizing actually works?

Thanks...

[Ingo]

On creating the virtual disk what image size do you choose in the VirtualBox GUI? Or just clicking Next with the default 2GB setting? If so then all the messages are all right.

[geekygreen]

On creating the virtual disk what image size do you choose in the VirtualBox GUI? Or just clicking Next with the default 2GB setting? If so then all the messages are all right.

When creating the virtual disk, I did use the default 2GB setting, but I also selected "Dynamic" as opposed to "Fixed".

Is that not the proper way to achieve a Dynamic sized virtual disk?

[LFS-Nr-3305]

Yes, it is. It will grow until it's Limit of 2 GB - which seems to be the case with your installation.

Don't know where are the missing (if I understood it correctly) 0.5 GB.
Start from scratch, this time with a bigger limit, or create another hdd-image, e.g. using "C:" for the windows system and "D:" for data and additional software.

[geekygreen]

Yes, it is. It will grow until it's Limit of 2 GB - which seems to be the case with your installation.

Ahhh...it was not clear to me in the manual that the 2GB default was the maximum size of the VD....I took it to be the starting size, which would grow as neccesary.....

Thanks for the clarification