Howto increase hard disk size after installing a guest OS

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runawaykite
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Post by runawaykite »

I had chosen the dynamically expanding disk format because I was running out of space on my old hard disk, and would eventually move the vdi file to a new external disk. As such, setting the vdi to 2TB which is the maximum allowed by Virtualbox is simply advanced planning. The physical size is much smaller ie 9GB, so it is not a problem

As for why I had originally chosen a maximum size of 10GB, it was a mistake. My fresh installation is already 6+ GB before I start adding other utilities and files.

And while I thank you for your response, even if I had set the maximum for the dynamically expanding vdi file to a smaller number like 100GB (which I have the physical storage space on my main system), I can't seem to get the partition information synchronised with the disk information via HDClone or Easeus.

All my other Guest OS were installed in dynamically expanding hard disks with limits set at 2TB. I prefer to keep them on the master hard disk of the host machine. But once their size grows too big, I move the vdi files to external locations with more storage space.
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Post by TerryE »

See my tutorial All about VDIs for a discussion on why having unnecessarily huge VDIs is a bad idea.
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haytham2000
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Re: Howto increase hard disk size after installing a guest OS

Post by haytham2000 »

hi all
i tried to use gparted to copy linux partition to a new vm
after copying i booted the new vm , and the screen was blank, i installed grub through supergrubdisc, then i got error 2, and at the end i got error 13 and stopped trying

i guess gparted fail if the guest os was a linux os??
i will try clonezilla
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Re: Howto increase hard disk size after installing a guest OS

Post by TerryE »

When I clone / compress Linux system, I just put
  • hd1 = old system
    hd0 = new system
and do the Gparted copies. I then boot off HD1 and mount the new system as /tmp/n. I fix up the UUIDs in /tmp/n/etc/fstab and /tmp/n/boot/grub/menu.lst then do a grub-install --root-directory=/tmp/n hd0 to install the grub bootstrap on the new disk.

Once this has been done, the old system image can be removed from the VM and the new one is bootable.
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haytham2000
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Re: Howto increase hard disk size after installing a guest OS

Post by haytham2000 »

hi all
I tried again with gparted and succeeded. What I have done wrong in the first time is that after setting the disk label, I format the new vdi into ext3 (i should just click paste and not format then resize), then i restored grub and mbr using supergrubdisc (to overcome that black screen). I did not use dd comand to copy mbr since it did not succeed and damage old vdi

thanks all
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Re: Howto increase hard disk size after installing a guest OS

Post by TerryE »

haytham2000 wrote:I did not use dd comand to copy mbr since it did not succeed and damage old vdi
Sounds to me as if you got your dd parameters wrong. If opens the input file read-only and therefore can't damage it. Glad to help, anyway :-)
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abssorb
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Re:

Post by abssorb »

klaus wrote:No. Just like a real hard disk cannot be extended easily just because it's full. Eventually we'll implement increasing (and decreasing) the size of a disk image, but that's quite some (tedious) work and currently has no particularly high priority. Help is always welcome.
Frankly the excuse that it is like a real hard drive and that can't be increased is rubbish. Imagine if virtual memory had such constraints! Solaris has always been able to change its swap space and any other partition.

I have just wasted an entire evening. Frustrated with vmware after a ubuntu upgrade on the host machine, I decided to try out VirtuaBox.
Everything was bliss! Until this inexplicably stupid, stupid constraint. It has wasted a lot of my time, after spending an evening getting a few windows installs exactly the way I need them, using modest test sizes for HDD. It's a sound assumption for anyone working in IT that a virtual setting as basic as disk space can be changed.

The least you can do is manage customer expectations properly and CHANGE THE INTERFACE to make it vividly clear that this cannot be changed after the guest OS is loaded. Using the actual words "This cannot be changed later". The fact that the gui says maximum is not adequate as this is open to interpretation in the subject of virtualisation.
From searching the forums, many people share this irritation. Personally, my estimation of this software went from near perfection to hated once it wasted my time. Yes I can fix it, but "Workarounds" is a Micros*ft concept. Getting it right the first time is a principle for Sun. What happened here?
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Re: Howto increase hard disk size after installing a guest OS

Post by TerryE »

Pulling out a quote from 2007 makes it a little difficult to track your point :-)

If you run out of space you have a very simple option which is to add a second drive and split some of your more volatile and growing directories onto it. You have mount points in both *nix and Windows to make thus transparent if you need to (though in Windows you need to download a Sysinternals tool to do so).

Alternatively you can copy the contents of your drive as discussed in this post and my tutorial All about VDIs to a larger drive. Even if VBox could support growing virtual drive, you would still need to use a partition manager tool to resize them.
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abssorb
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Re: Howto increase hard disk size after installing a guest OS

Post by abssorb »

TerryE wrote:Pulling out a quote from 2007 makes it a little difficult to track your point :-)
Did you read my post properly? Especially the quote:
klaus wrote:Eventually we'll implement increasing (and decreasing) the size of a disk image, but that's quite some (tedious) work
I found this via search. and the point is why is this still wasting people's time two years on? Sun have owned this since Feb 2008.
TerryE wrote:If you run out of space you have a very simple option which is to add a second drive and split some of your more volatile and growing directories onto it.
That's a workaround. I know how to fix it, the point is I shouldn't have to.
TerryE wrote: Even if VBox could support growing virtual drive...............
Even if it can't, the interface could so easily provide adequate warning so that new users do not waste their time. This is the main point.
I am sure some will enjoy the challenge and see it as collecting another 'geek badge', as once learnt it is never forgotten. But that is not the way to commercial success. The knowledge has more value for when people need to increase their original planned size, which was arrived at with adequate info.

Not properly advising people that there are hard limits in this virtual scenario is stupid. Every new customer of this software is faced with going through the pain of this. A simple instruction in the GUI would stop this dead.
cskeen
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Re: Howto increase hard disk size after installing a guest OS

Post by cskeen »

I'm very interested to find out an Admin / Moderator responce to this valid argument. The Gparted solution did not work for me, I actualy made a copy of the vdi and had another analysts attempt it and the end result is the same, Windows blue screens and both Vdi's end up corrupted. But when we restore the original vdi, everything is fine.

We happen to be running Sharepoint on a virtualized server and I ran out of space. Its very hard to move the content database without causing damage to the sharepoint site. I then tried tried a PXE boot to Ghost and copied partition to a VMWare virtual desktop and ran Repair on the MS Windows Server 2003 platform and I was back up and running.

If there is any development on changing size on virtual drives, I recommend putting that at the top as it appears to be in high demand.

Thanks,
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vbox4me2
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Re: Howto increase hard disk size after installing a guest OS

Post by vbox4me2 »

How diffecult can this be, clonezilla, gparted, done eat cake and such.
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Re: Howto increase hard disk size after installing a guest OS

Post by cskeen »

vbox4me2 wrote:How diffecult can this be, clonezilla, gparted, done eat cake and such.

Good Job
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Re: Howto increase hard disk size after installing a guest OS

Post by cskeen »

When using Clonezilla Live iso I get from vbox (FATAL: Could not read from the boot medium! System halted. each version. Gparted actualy looks like it works until you boot up vbox.
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Re: Howto increase hard disk size after installing a guest OS

Post by cskeen »

Ah Success, Prob a bit more difficult and you need a Partition Magic Lic.

I ran a virtual windows xp box. Installed Partition magic, mounted my small vdi and my new large vdi. Ran Part magic and was able to clone over the data. Restarted vbox using my new vdi and Loaded up just fine.
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JshWright
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Re: Howto increase hard disk size after installing a guest OS

Post by JshWright »

Dunno if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but since 3.0.2 added the "--existing" argument to VBoxManage clonevdi, you can now clone one VDI to another.

Note: the original VDI needs to be larger than 4GB (if it's less than 4GB, then the target VDI needs to be less than 8 GB)

~JW
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