virtualbox.org

Well, you have some Linux knowhow, so why not just boot the VM with a liveCD and mount the drive there, to check where the space is? Linux isn't bound by the NTFS permissions.

I have the same problem.
I did start with Ubuntu 9.04 Live CD, and I found my virtual hard disk with 9.1GB of free space . What is fgoing on here?
I have Ubuntu 9.04 host, and I have this problem on several WIndows XP and Windows Vista guests, using VirtualBox v3.0.10.

Any help, please?

Sopalajo de Arrierez wrote:I have the same problem.
I did start with Ubuntu 9.04 Live CD, and I found my virtual hard disk with 9.1GB of free space . What is fgoing on here?
I have Ubuntu 9.04 host, and I have this problem on several WIndows XP and Windows Vista guests, using VirtualBox v3.0.10.

Any help, please?

So, are the VMs hosted on FAT32?

No, I had that problem a long time ago, so I learned by hard the experience .
The hard disks (.vdi files) of the VMs are in Linux Ext3 partitions, so I think this should not be the problem. I even have in the same directory another .vdi files with 8GB size or more, and the size of the problematic .vdi has not reached 3.4GB.
Maybe this is a bug of VIrtualBox v3.0.10, I think.

OK, Friends, problem solved :
My partition (/dev/sda3) storing Machines and VDIs was full .
A pop-up message from VirtualBox saying: "Your hard disk is full" or "You need more storage space to run VMs" would have helped . Maybe an enhancement for future versions?

Sorry and thanks a lot for all.

Checking storage space is something the user has to keep an eye on. Windows has a perfect reporting mechanism that is now flawed (why would you need a warning when 20% is left on your 2 TB hard drive? That's 40 GB!). Linux has the same idea, you can add panel applets to monitor hard drive space and give a warning when a certain limit is reached.
You have to keep one thing in mind on Linux file systems, you have by default 5% spare space for root blocks. That's a part of the hard drive that only the root user can write to to make sure the system can still boot properly. Take that 5% on a 2 TB drive and you have 4 GB that's left unused. You can disable that though.

Sopalajo de Arrierez wrote: A pop-up message from VirtualBox saying: "Your hard disk is full" or "You need more storage space to run VMs" would have helped . Maybe an enhancement for future versions?

Mmmm... yes, I think you are right, Sasquatch. So, I should correct myself:

A more descriptive error message from VirtualBox saying: "Your physical hard disk is full" or "You need more physical storage space to run VMs" would have helped, differencing from .vdi virtual hard "disk full" . Maybe an enhancement for future versions?

Best Wishes.

I have exactly the same problem but unlike sopalajo said my drive is still not full. I have made Virtual drive as auto expanding with 10GB as intial capacity. So once I install XP and start using it it give me error that Hard drive full. I have checked the drive on which .vdi resides and it still got 35 GB free. Please help.

I am running Ubuntu 9.10 and .vdi is on \mnt\hdd3\

matrixd wrote:I have exactly the same problem but unlike sopalajo said my drive is still not full. I have made Virtual drive as auto expanding with 10GB as intial capacity. So once I install XP and start using it it give me error that Hard drive full. I have checked the drive on which .vdi resides and it still got 35 GB free. Please help.

I am running Ubuntu 9.10 and .vdi is on \mnt\hdd3\

Which file system does that drive have? FAT32 by any chance? If so, that's your problem: 4GB file size limit.

I am having the same problem here.
My host OS is a Windows 7 with Virtualbox 3.1.0. I am trying to run a Win XP as guest.
What I've found so far is about a possible bug with virtualbox.
Here is where I got all the info so far (http://mwolk.com/blog/how-you-can-reduc ... -box-file/)
Let me explain it better:
- Installed Win XP with 10GB vdi file size
- After setting up the OS, installed VS2005 on it (about 2.6GB installation) from a DVD on the Host to the Guest
- After that, tried to install the SP1 for VS2005 and got the error from the installer saying my disk was full
- Check on the Guest system and had only 669MB free space
- Searched on the internet and figured out that probably Virtualbox has problems cleaning up the files after setup
- From that same topic, did the following steps:
. Uninstalled any unused software on the Guest OS
. Did a defrag on the Guest OS
. Used a sDelete (a tool that fullfill the empty spaces with zeroes to make sure the space is clean)
. Compacted the vdi using the VirtualBox Manager
. Cloned the vdi to a new one vdi file (following the tips on that post above)
. Added the new vdi file as a HD on Virtualbox
. No free space was found... XP still saying the free space is 669MB

After that used the CloneVdi tool from this forum and added more 5GB to the vdi file... no success so far.
I am pretty sure I have free space on my harddisk (about 25GB).


Any help would be welcomed here...

Exact same problem here.
running Ubuntu 9.10 (the Karmic Koala). Installing windows XP Home and after several updates I get the message 'Filesystem root has only xxx MB of disk space ..." I have allocated 50GB NTFS during windows setup, so I guess this is not a windows problem, rather a linux one. But being a complete novice on Linux, not very sure either.
By the way, I had the same issue with VMware Player 3.0 on same host.
Any Linux gurus out there willing to help?
Thanks

Edit, I post the same question in Ubuntu forums (Thanks snowpine) and it appears that for some reason (linux newbe here ..) the virtualbox was installed on a directory called loop0. This file is full. I used the defaults when installing both Ubuntu and Virtualbox. any idea on how to free up some space or alternatively how to move the contents of this "loop0" file to another larger partition? I post a screenshot of the tree if a linux guru has few thoughts/suggestions.
Thanks for helping,
Stav