Increasing the size of a Windows Guest drive (VBoxManage)

[BobOra]

I have a Windows 10 Enterprise 64 guest in a macOS host.

I'm trying to increase the size of a Windows Guest drive. I tried this:

http://www.ubergizmo.com/how-to/resize-virtualbox-disk/

... however:

In C:\Program Files\Oracle

... there is no VirtualBox directory. There is VirtualBox Guest Additions, but no VBoxManage command in it.

[andyp73]

Consulting a third party site and following instructions for a scenario different to yours is bound to led to confusion and potential data loss.

You have a macOS host therefore you need to run VBoxManage on there! There are instructions available here on the two step process of how to resize a drive.

If you have used the defaults for all of the directories VirtualBox uses then under your "home" directory there will be a folder called "VirtualBox VMs". In there you will find a folder for each guest you have created each of which will contain a .vdi file that is your Windows guest's drive and that is the file to point VBoxManage at.

-Andy.

[BobOra]

Thanks for that.

Since I dragged the .vdi file into (macOS) Terminal, the spaces were already escaped, thus the following does not work: "if the path has spaces in it you will need to wrap the path in quotes.", but without quotes, Step 1 worked fine.

In (Step 2) Disk Management, there is a Recovery partition immediately to the right of the C volume that I am trying to extend (and then the new free space to the right of that). Disk Management won't allow C to be extended if the free space isn't immediately to its right (i.e., contiguous). The instructions on the web page (mentioned in the reply to my post) refer to a third party site for a tool: "Gparted Live CD" (I found reference to other third party partition managers as well). I'd prefer to not have to use a third party tool, but if that is necessary, has anyone here (other than the web page author) used and found success with "Gparted Live CD"?

[socratis]

You won't be using the 3rd party GParted directly on your host. You download the GParted ISO (https://gparted.org/ on the right-hand side), and then you boot your VM from that. Resize your HD and then you remove the GParted ISO and you boot your VM normally. You can then delete the GParted ISO from your host, and you'll never know it was there...

[BobOra]

Apologies if I've overlooked the appropriate documentation, but I've downloaded the GParted ISO, and it shows up. On non-VM Windows machines, I'm familiar with holding down a key (F12?) while rebooting Windows, in order to boot from another source; how do I boot from the GParted ISO in my VM? thanks

[socratis]

how do I boot from the GParted ISO in my VM?

1. You insert the GParted ISO in the CD drive of your VM. Under VM Settings » Storage » click on the CD on the left hand side to select the CD drive » click on the "Optical drive" and browse for the location of you GParted ISO.
2. VM Settings » System » Motherboard » make sure that the Optical is before the Hard Disk in the Boot Order.
3. Start the VM.

[BobOra]

Thank you!