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Is there a way to change a Dynamically Allocated Storage drive to a Fixed Size drive? Even though my drive has a 100 GB virtual size and an actual size of just 19 GB, I keep getting messages telling me that my system is low on storage. I thought Dynamic Allocation was supposed to take care of this automatically but I'm finding it's a big problem on my system. My guest system is Windows XP on a Windows 7 host. The problem is most acute when I am using Outlook Express, my favorite for e-mail.

Please attach the actual error message and the vbox.log (compressed) for the guest.

OK, see the attached.

Why would you think that switching to a fixed size VDI would fix this problem? It won't.

Post a screenshot showing the size of the guests C volume (not the drive), and the number of bytes currently used.

My guess: the C partition is substantially smaller than the 100G drive. Also, you didnt read the part in the user manual which explains what dynamic drives are (hint: they do not have a variable capacity).

Ok, here's the screen shot you asked for. Do you need any other information?

How much disk space is left on your host C: drive?

KirbyLA wrote:Ok, here's the screen shot you asked for.

No, that is not the information I asked for. I didn't ask to see the VDI on the host, I asked you to show me the guest's C: volume, which (given this new information) I now anticipate will be 20GB in size, and almost full.

Another guess: you already resized this from an older 20GB fixed size drive, though you haven't so far felt the need to mention it.

Martin wrote:How much disk space is left on your host C: drive?

The host drive isn't the issue. That would not cause the guest to issue a low disk space warning, and offer to delete files. If the host was low on space it would be VBox issuing the warning, then it would suspend the VM.

Is this the screen shot you need? I was under the impression that Dynamically Allocated Storage means that VirtualBox automatically increases the size of the C drive when needed. Is that not correct? You are right, I have increased the size of the drive already. What do you suggest I do now?

Yes, that is the guest information I need. As you can clearly see, the guest's C: volume is 20GB, as predicted, occupying a small portion of a 100GB drive. What you need to do is use a partition manager to adjust the C partition to fill the drive. See FAQ: How to resize a virtual drive. You have already done step 1, you still need to do step 2.

And no, there has never been a version of XP that can handle variable capacity drives. Once a partitions' filesystem is laid down, only a partition management tool can change it. The function of dynamic drives is explained in the user manual, but briefly: "dynamic" refers to dynamic allocation of storage on the host, not dynamic allocation of capacity in the guest. It is the feature which allows VDI files to be substantially smaller than a simple disk image would be for the same capacity.