[solved] how to increase VDi disk space?

[luquino]

I have VBox 4.0 on Ubuntu 10.04 host, with Windows XP guest working.
Everything is ok, but when I created the virtual machine (1 year ago) I gave 8.5 GB to the VDI, now I'd need to increase the "disk space". The VDI resides in a dedicated partition of 20 GB.
Is it possible to expand the VDI up to fill up the partition?

I'm sorry if this item has already been discussed, but searching the forum I didn't find any other post about this problem.

[Perryg]

Use modify HD and resize to increase the disk and then Gparted to increase the partition. See VBoxManage in your VirtualBox users manual.

[luquino]

ok, I resized the VDI with VBoxManage modifyhd.
Now in the VBox main windows I can see the details of my virtual machine saying that the VDI has a virtual size of 17.09 GB and and actual size of 8.63 GB.
But when I boot the machine it says again "Poor space in the disk" and if I open the C device it says that the maximum size is 8.63 GB and has only 190 MB free.
What can I do now?

[Perryg]

Did you do the second part where I said to use Gparted to increase the partition?
Do you have snapshots?

[luquino]

the partition is 20 GB (as I said in my first post).
No, I don't use snapshots or freeze or anything else. Every time I finish, I shutdown the machine completely.

[Perryg]

You need to make sure you understand the difference of HDD size and partition size.
Resizing *only increases the HDD size. If you are still getting the same error about not enough disk space then you need to use Gparted to increase the original partition size to include the new size. Did you download Gparted.iso and put that in your virtual CD/DVD and boot the guest? What does it say. Please post a screen shot.

[luquino]

Well, I use linux and manage computers since a lot of years, when I say partition size I well know what does it mean and as well when I say HDD size.
In my first post I well specified that the VDI file resides in a dedicated partition of 20 GB. This means that in that partition resides only the VDI file and no more files or whatsoever stuff.
So, we can reach the conclusion that if the partition is 20 GB size and the VDI file is automatically expandible up to 17.09 GB, as there is no more files o directories in the partition: it has all the space required for the expansion.
Anyway here you have the screenshot.
Libero means free in italian.


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

[Perryg]

The hosts partition is not what you want to be dinking with. You resized the guests HDD with VBoxManage and now you need to increase the guests partition with Gparted.
Put the Gparted.iso in the guests virtual CD/DVD and boot the guest.

[luquino]

OK, I fixed the problem.
I realized too later that you was saying me to use Gparted on the guest Windows machine.
Everything is fine now.
I apoligize.