gparted - unallocated space?

[odoyle81]

Hi I'm hoping someone can help..I'm trying to follow the instructions posted here and elsewhere to increase the size of my vdi, but gparted won't recognize my "old" disk..it just says unallocated space..
I've searched online for a solution and tried both clonevdi and vboxmanage to make clones but I can't get this to work and I'm pretty frustrated.. any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[ChipMcK]

Which set of instructions and at what step in those instructions are you?

[odoyle81]

sorry for the lack of details..

The general instructions I'm trying to follow are:
1. clone the vdi
2. attach to vm and load gparted/clonevilla
3. copy partition into larger vdi then reattach to new vm

I am stuck at the part where I need to copy the partitions, because both gparted and clonevilla don't recognize my vdi partition. It says "unallocated space" and when I double click for details, it says " invalid partition table on sdb - wrong signature 0"

I tried cloning using clonevdi within a windows 7 vm (via shared folder)..that didn't work
I tried cloning using clonevdi via wine on my mac..that didn't work
I tried cloning using vboxmanage CLI..that didn't work
I don't understand why it is working for everyone else but for me for some reason, my partition isn't recognized.
The closest I have come to success was using clonezilla - I got to a grub menu after trying to copy partitions but got stuck there.

I have a mac with leopard and latest version of virtualbox and gparted

Thanks!

[mpack]

You seem to be mixing two entirely different procedures from "web lore". In fact, if your first step was to clone the VDI then you don't need to copy anything to the new VDI - the clone already has everything from the old drive. If you used CloneVDI to clone and enlarge the drive then all that remains is to use a gparted live ISO to increase the main partition size. I mention CloneVDI since no other external cloning method will change the drive size.

The alternative (internal) technique is to create a new larger drive, attach it to the VM, copy old drive to new using the disk imaging tool of your choice, then again you use the gparted live CD ISO to enlarge the main partition on the new drive.

[odoyle81]

Ok I'm not using the alternative method you mention.

So let me get this straight:
1. I should clone using clonevdi
2. attach clone to new vm and boot into gparted and it should recognize the partition already and I just need to expand it?

My problem is gparted won't recognize any partitions..even if I load gparted with JUST my original vdi..shouldn't it recognize it?
I'm running ubuntu and it still runs fine so it MUST have a partition table right??

[Sasquatch]

Did you by chance encrypt the whole drive? That might be the problem.

[odoyle81]

nope.. its a vanilla install..

[Sasquatch]

Encryption is a question during installation which you may have selected.

[odoyle81]

yes but the default is not to encrypt. I am 99% sure it is not encrypted.. is there a way to confirm?

[Sasquatch]

Do you need to enter a passphrase when you boot the VM? You can also check with it's own Gparted install, no need to boot to another one, only when you need to actually modify a partition that can't be unmounted.

[ChipMcK]

if IDE, did you mount as Primary Master, rather than Secondary Master?

[odoyle81]

Do you need to enter a passphrase when you boot the VM? You can also check with it's own Gparted install, no need to boot to another one, only when you need to actually modify a partition that can't be unmounted.

Yes I use a password to enter ubuntu...
When I run gparted from within ubuntu, it still shows the entire drive as unallocated space.. what is going on here?

if IDE, did you mount as Primary Master, rather than Secondary Master?

Yes

[odoyle81]

any advice? I'm still stuck

[mpack]

When I run gparted from within ubuntu, it still shows the entire drive as unallocated space.. what is going on here?

Two obvious answers: (1) the drive contents are invalid [drive corrupt, or you are not copying the right file, eg. you are copying an unpartioned base VDI from a snapshot tree], (2) the drive is not using a partitioning scheme which gparted recognizes.

I've never looked at the partition map of an "encrypted drive", but I'd expect that in fact its the partitions which are protected, the MBR and partition map remaining "clear" (it kind of has to, for the BIOS to be able to early-boot the PC). Entries in the partition map would perhaps have unusual type codes to indicate encrypted volumes.

[ChipMcK]

I checked at the gparted forum and it seems that unless the partition type/format is known (not encrypted), gparted can not process the partition