virtualbox.org

Hi

Before the following procedure worked well to expand a HD for Windows

Terminal:
cd /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/Resources/VirtualBoxVM.app/Contents/MacOS/
VBoxManage modifyhd --resize [new size in MB] [/path/to/vdi]
VBoxManage showhdinfo ~/path/to/vmdrive.vdi

Then starting up VM Windows 10 again and do the following commands to do the actually extension

Computer> Right Click >Manage> Storage> Disk Management>Notice the addedVolume > Select the current Volume > right click> Extend volume. Now the CurrentVolume is extended.

This time I found that the there is a “Reovery partition” between C and the new part that I want to extend C towards.
Then extension of the C does not work,

So how do we now extend the hard disk?

You need to move the recovery partition aside first. That is a guest OS operation, not a VirtualBox operation, so you'll need to Google for how you'd do it in the physical world, e.g. after transferring a disk image to a new larger disk.

The question really is, does current version of VB extends the disk at the end (in which case in guest Windows machine the layout would be
System Partition (EFI) - OS partition (C) - empty space )
or due to some bug it extends by adding the space at the beginning of the disk (as seems to be described), hence causing this issue

It is way too easy to say "It is not us, it is them..."

sebus wrote:It is way too easy to say "It is not us, it is them..."

It is how things are. Not us, not you, not them. Do you really have to blame someone for the way that things work? Because they don't work as you imagined/would have liked? No...

sebus wrote:does current version of VB extends the disk at the end

It was always and (I believe) it will always be like that, with a small correction; VirtualBox has absolutely no idea what partition scheme you have on your VDI. It doesn't and can't care. If it did, it would have to have specific routines for each and every partition out there. It doesn't.

sebus wrote:or due to some bug it extends by adding the space at the beginning of the disk

It didn't. Please read the OP's message again. The recovery partition was at the end of the hard drive and it pretty much ended smack in the middle after the resize operation.

sebus wrote:It is way too easy to say "It is not us, it is them..."

No more easy than saying "I don't like this reality, please give me another". The facts are as they are. As I said, you would meet the same situation if you replace a Win10 boot disk in your physical PC with a new larger one. I.e. this is a problem between you and the guest OS, specifically with how it manages disk space. It is not a problem with the disk drive.

@janpeter, see that there are a number of software packages out there proposing solutions.

Did you find a good FREE utility for extending non-adjacent Windows 10 partitions that appeared TRUSTWORTHY and did the job?

Download the GParted Live ISO, insert it into the virtual CD of the guest VM, boot from it and it will deal with most partition types.

-Andy.

Yay, it worked!

Thanks a lot andyp73.

I'd noticed that package but the really valuable information is that it was going to work.

Otherwise, backups notwithstanding, pressing the button is a bit like Russian Roulette.

maker675 wrote:Otherwise, backups notwithstanding, pressing the button is a bit like Russian Roulette.

Glad to see you got it to do what you needed it to. The risk is no different to doing the same thing with upgrading a physical hard disk - that is why lots of the advice around here is about making backups of both important files within the guest and also the whole VM directory on the host.

-Andy.

Yep.

There's the risk inherent in such a procedure which one has to live with.

But then there's the risk associated with the choice of the right software package....

and for that I'm most grateful!

It's funny, that in the whole thread the FAQ "How to resize a Virtual Drive", was not once mentioned!

As you can see there in the FAQ, GParted is the tool of choice...

Odd thing, even if one searches the forum for "How to resize a Virtual Drive" (which I didn't - more like "extend partitions") that most excellent thread doesn't appear in the first page of results. Hadn't noticed the tutorial folder.

maker675 wrote:even if one searches the forum for "How to resize a Virtual Drive" that most excellent thread doesn't appear in the first page of results.

Searching for this term, I get the FAQ as the first result, in everybody's favorite spy search engine. Another tip if you're using search engines is to restrict its scope by using the "site" directive, as in "How to resize a Virtual Drive site:virtualbox.org"

Seems it's possible to create a shortcut for in-site searching (a "bang" using the exclamation mark as syntax) on DuckDuckGo

https://duckduckgo.com/newbang