virtualbox.org

So at risk of getting flamed, I ask because I was unable to find anything about this in the help section or these boards - I installed vista on a 20GB virtual file, and of course, vista now needs more space (specifically to install SP2).

Can anyone point me in the right direction on this? Is it not possible? During the install process I specifically chose 20GB because it said it could be expanded later - I suspect now that it was referring to the accrual space it was using vs the absolute max.

Thanks!

Please see the VirtualBox FAQ for help on that. If you have a Windows machine available or you have Wine installed on your Mac, you can use CloneVDI (see the sticky in Windows Hosts section) to grow the VDI file.
You can also create a new VDI and clone the current one to the new one using CloneZilla (or similar tools).

The size that you provide when creating the VDI is the max size of said VDI. It will grow to that size when you select dynamic, it will occupy the full space on your hard drive when you select fixed. The difference is explained in the manual .

Hallo all,
I have a very naive question about this topic.
If the size of the virtual HD grows up to the selected amount it seems that it could be increased just by changing the "size" parameter of the VDI file.
Why isn't it so simple?

cheers,
Paolo

Can you increase a real HD?

Hardware is different from software, so why do you ask?
cheers,
Paolo

P_V wrote:Hardware is different from software, so why do you ask?
cheers,
Paolo

It's all documented, so why do you ask?

Hallo,

The point is that you _can_ decide the size of the virtual HD
but it is difficult to change it after you write something.
( while it is not possible to change the size of a real HD...).

Moreover, since the size of the VDI file increases with the usage it means:
1) that in the code there must be a parameter which sets the size limit
2) when you write something on the virtual drive it doesn't necessary need
all the space on the HD.

One reason could be that the "HD size parameter" modifies the position of the memory blocks.
I suppose that the difficulty is this one, but that's all I could understand from the documentation.

I asked because (for non experts, like me) it is not so simple to understand,
even with the documentation.

cheers,
Paolo

The file systems of an operating system manage the space within a partition that resides on a hard drive.
The file systems of an operating system do not manage the space on the hard drive.