Cross Reference:
http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic. ... 75#p399477Hello, mpack!
Quoted text is from CloneVDI-exe-3.00, release notes.txt
The "Increase partition size" option is only available when the "Increase virtual drive size" option
is selected. If the "Increase partition size" option is selected then CloneVDI will automatically
increase the size of the main partition to fill the new drive size. This feature only works at
present on FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS partitions, however it has side effects which may be useful to
you even with other guest filesystems (see the notes on increasing partition size later on).
Don, I was not aware that a partition's particular filesystem affected the disk's partition table. I assume you mean
expanding & formatting the clone's larger partition, no? If so, I assume from the above that, if the partition is to support a Linux filesystem, you recommend using 'gparted' to enlarge the partition's used space instead of using CloneVDI's "Increase partition size" option, correct?
The "Compact drive while copying" checkbox enables a feature whereby the tool identifies unused
blocks(*) in the guest filesystem, and omits those from the clone. This would be most useful if a
large amount of file data has been deleted inside the guest. This saves you from having to run SDelete
or its Linux equivalent before making the clone, to get the same result. This feature only does
something if CloneVDI recognizes the guest filesystem, and at present the only supported filesystems
are NTFS (tested with NT4 and later), EXT2/3/4, FAT16 and FAT32.
Okay, now I'm unsure whether CloneVDI supports Linux filesystem resizing from original VDI to clone VDI.
Disclosure: I plan to use CloneVDI to simply copy-create a larger VDI, then run the clone to see if everything is joyous, and then to use 'gparted' to enlarge the clone's filesystem. I'm providing this post simply to give you feedback on your documentation.
I will be back with the results of using CloneVDI. I've tried VBox's native "Clone" function but it didn't change fixed to dynamic. I've also tried to use 'vboxmanage' and wound up with a dynamic VMDK that 'vboxmanage' would not register with the VBox Manager (presumably because it's VMDK instead of VDI).
Regards,
Mark.