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I'm running Virtualbox 4.2.18 and trying to expand the HD of my Win7 guest from 50gb to 70gb. I've successfully used the following cmd to resize the .vdi: VBoxManage modifyhd 19c4f61a-hrhrhr4234-9d39-bda21c2b8207 --resize 71680. This is properly reflected in my VirtualBox Manager: SATA Port 0 as "Win7-64b.vdi (Normal, 70.00 GB), so I assume I'm doing this correctly. The next step (I think) should be to extend the dynamic disk using the Extend Volume option in my Win7 guest. However, that option is greyed out and cannot be selected. Please help... so frustrating!

Does the guest have any snapshots? Resize will not work on guests that have snapshots.

indeed it did have one snapshot. I'm deleting it now and will retry. Thanks for your post!

Perryg,
I could not delete the snapshot for the following error:
Failed to delete the snapshot 4-18-12 after upgrade of the virtual machine Win7-64b.
Could not merge the medium '/Users/Bruce/VirtualBox VMs/Win7-64b/Snapshots/{377c5e47e-2d7ec7c3af55}.vdi' to '/Users/Bruce/VirtualBox VMs/Win7-64b/Win7-64b.vdi' (VERR_INVALID_PARAMETER).
I would be grateful for any suggestions to resolve this. Thanks!

At this point you are better off doing a clone of the original to be safe. Make sure you choose to create a single flat clone with out snapshots as this will include the snapshot. Then you can resize the clone and extend the primary partition. Once you are sure it is working you can delete the original. Just make sure to create a full clone and not a linked clone. You may need to re-activate the new clone but do not until you are sure it is working properly.

Perryg,
I'm getting a similar type error when trying to clone my Guest as you suggested:
Failed to clone the virtual machine Win7-64b.
Could not create the clone medium '/Users/Bruce/VirtualBox VMs/Win7-64b 70GB/Win7-64b 70GB.vdi' (VERR_DEV_IO_ERROR).
Result Code:
VBOX_E_FILE_ERROR (0x80BB0004)
Component:
Medium
Interface:
IMedium {29989373-b111-4654-8493-2e1176cba890}

My Guest Win7 VM only has 3.7 of 50.0 GB free space. My Mac host has >200GB free. Could this be part of causing the failures?
I really appreciate your help!

I notice that the base disk has "70GB" in the name. Presumably it didn't have that before you resized it. Do I gather that you cloned the base disk before you tried to resize it. And then what, you mounted the clone vdi into the VM?

If so, this probably made a right mess of the VM. I.e. you now have a clone of the base disk mounted in the VM instead instead of the expected snapshot VDI. You simply can't do this kind of manipulation if you use snapshots - that's only one reason why more experienced users generally avoid them.

Confirm if this is what you did, then we can consider a plan of action. Also confirm what your host is: also Win7?

Hi mpack,
My Host is Mac osx 10.7. My current (and only) Guest is Win7-64b. This Guest was originally built with 50 GB of HD space. I currently have <4GB free. I have 1 snapshot that I do not need (deletion failed). I had attempted to increase the HD space to 70GB prior to any attempting to delete the snapshot. (I was not aware that this was a prerequisite.) After successfully running the resize utility, I opened the Win7 Guest and attempted to Extend Volume to claim the additional 20GB, but the Windows function to Extend the volume is grayed out.
So that's my tale-of-woe. I greatly appreciate any assistance, guidance, or plan you can provide to help me through this debacle.

That doesn't really address the question I asked, which is how come the VM is using a VDI file with the phrase "70GB" in the name, which certainly would not have been the case before you started this exercise. Yes, I understand that you resized the VDI, but that doesn't cause a name change. I am suggesting that some of your problems (e.g. not being able to clone or merge/delete the snapshot) are caused by what you did that resulted in the name change: and I'm trying to find out what that was. The resize itself is only partly relevant.

Sorry for any confusion. "Win7-64b 70GB.vdi" was the name I chose for the clone of my Guest "Win7-64b.vdi", which has 50GB currently. I used this name because I intended to extend this volume from 50GB to 70GB after a successful cloning. As described earlier in this thread, this clone failed, throwing the following error msg:
Failed to clone the virtual machine Win7-64b.
Could not create the clone medium '/Users/Bruce/VirtualBox VMs/Win7-64b 70GB/Win7-64b 70GB.vdi' (VERR_DEV_IO_ERROR).

I hope this helps to both explain the situation and answer your question. I did not perform any name change to my (only) Guest system, Win7-64b.vdi. Any further advice would be greatly appreciated. I just can't figure this out...

Ah ok, now I understand.

It looks like you're getting some kind of host disk error when it tries to create the clone. DEV_IO_ERROR would indicate a low level problem, often a serious one, but on a Mac it's probably just a permissions issue. I'll back out now because I'm not qualified to talk about Mac host system problems.

OK thank you. Hopefully someone else can provide some guidance. I'm still not sure if my low disk space situation could be root cause of these errors when trying to delete a snapshot, or creating a clone. I would appreciate anyone's help with this situation.

Skimeister wrote:I'm still not sure if my low disk space situation could be root cause of these errors

Nothing going on inside the guest can affect the host's ability to copy and manipulate files (clone, resize). Lack of disk space is a management issue, not an issue that prevents a hardware simulation (VirtualBox) from working.

If you were out of disk space in the host partition then that could certainly account for the DEV_IO_ERROR when you attempt to create the clone.

I have plenty of space on my Host... >250GBs. Is there any way to manually force the deletion of a Guest snapshot, or manually execute a Clone command that will bypass this error msg?

ps. Moving this discussion to "Mac OS X Hosts" since it's certainly not a generic "Using VirtualBox" discussion.

I don't believe that any amount of fiddling with VirtualBox will help this problem, which I believe is a permissions or disk space issue on your host.

As to alternatives, the only other way to clone a VM is to install Wine, then download and use CloneVDI and then clone the latest snapshot file in the Snapshots subfolder (do NOT make the mistake of cloning the base VDI). CloneVDI also allows you to resize the hdd while cloning. If you output the clone to a USB or network drive then you should be able to avoid the I/O error. You can then clean up your hosts hdd before building a new VM around the clone VDI (don't attempt to use it in the original VM).