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syuusuke
Asked: 2010-04-17 01:51:29 +0800 CST

VMWare guest OS is not using full hard drive space

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I'm wondering if you can give me some insight on how to figure this out. I've recently virtualized a w2k3 server that had 10GB C:\ drive size. Once I finished virtualizing it, I expanded the disk to 20GB for C:\ and within guest OS (W2K3) computer management settings, you can see it recognizes as 20GB partition C:. But for some reason, if I opened windows explorer and see the properties of C:\, it will only show total size of 10GB.

Does anyone know how to solve this?

EDIT: This is how I expanded my disk. I used VMWare converter, used the option within VMWare converter to expand my C:\ partition. After finishing virtualizing to ESXi server, I didn't touch it in W2k3. No manual expansion of disk required in w2k3, it just reads it as 20GB while Windows Explorer shows 10GB still.

EDIT: this is exactly my problem according to vmware kb. http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=1005890&sliceId=1&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&dialogID=74780861&stateId=0%200%2080507132

Anyone ever experienced this before?

virtualization partition vmware-esxi drive

2 Answers

  1. It sounds like you have increased the size of the disk; but not the partition.

    In Windows, Manage the computer, and go to Disk Management (Storage -> Disk Management). Is the disk listed as "Basic" or "Dynamic"?

    If it is Dynamic, your best bet is to use a P2V tool (VMware Converter, Platespin, etc) to create a new identical machine with bigger disks (Converter does this easily). You simply tell converter it is a physical machine and walk through the prompts, giving the appropriate disks more space. It handles the partition increase for you.

    If the disk is still Basic, you can use a partition editor (I use a bootable ISO for the Gnome Partition Editor - gparted).

    Warning - make sure you have good backups of your data. Do this on a test system the first time - I am not responsible for lost data.

    Shut down the VM cleanly (if the file system is not quiesced, the process will fail). Boot from the gparted CD. The partition editor will start, and you will see the partition and disk sizes are different. Click Resize, drag the partition to fill the drive and hit apply. You'll wait a bit while it works and then be told to reboot. Voila!

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  2. An easier way to do what Cybersylum said is to just use Paragorn, should be faster as well I believe.

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