How do you get a dynamically expanding VDI to expand?

RONSMEYER · Post by **RONSMEYER** » 6. Nov 2012, 04:30

I am getting out of space messages in my Win 7 32-bit VM. Plus every time I start the VM I get a message about not enough space for the page file. Drive C: properties in the VM it shows 19.1 GB used, 746 MB available. In the host settings it shows Type (Format): Normal(VDI), Virtual Size: 97.66 GB, Actual Size: 17.26 GB Details: Dynamically allocated storage. There is 446 GB available on the host hard drive. Host is Win 7 64-bit. I thought these type of VDI files were supposed to automatically expand? Yet it seems stuck and will not grow. I don't know what I've done...or not done? How do you get a dynamically expanding VDI to expand?

Post by **Perryg** » 6. Nov 2012, 05:44

When you create the guest you are asked how big you want it to be, which it can not grow past. Dynamic will start small and grow to the size you stipulated.

You can increase the Virtual Drive and it is explained in the users manual, as well as in the following link.

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=50661

Don't forget that you need to expand the primary partition to use the new space. Windows 7 can be extended by using the disk management feature of Windows 7.

RONSMEYER · Post by **RONSMEYER** » 7. Nov 2012, 01:39

Expand the primary partition...that was it, thank you. That's not mentioned in the manual btw.

Post by **Perryg** » 7. Nov 2012, 01:48

That's not mentioned in the manual btw.

That's because it has nothing to do with VirtualBox. You need to look at this like real hardware. VirtualBox is providing the hard drive. What you do with it is up to you.

Post by **mpack** » 7. Nov 2012, 13:53

RONSMEYER wrote:Expand the primary partition...that was it, thank you. That's not mentioned in the manual btw.

In fact it is mentioned.

VBox user manual section 8.23 wrote: The --resize x option (where x is the desired new total space in megabytes) allows
you to change the capacity of an existing image; this adjusts the logical size of a virtual
disk without affecting the physical size much. 3 This currently works only for VDI and
VHD formats, and only for the dynamically allocated variants, and can only be used to
expand (not shrink) the capacity. For example, if you originally created a 10G disk which
is now full, you can use the --resize 15360 command to change the capacity to 15G
(15,360MB) without having to create a new image and copy all data from within a virtual
machine. Note however that this only changes the drive capacity; you will typically next
need to use a partition management tool inside the guest to adjust the main partition to ﬁll
the drive.

virtualbox.org

How do you get a dynamically expanding VDI to expand?

How do you get a dynamically expanding VDI to expand?

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