Increasing the size IDE VMDK Disk in VirtualBox

This week we'll be covering a slightly different topic - increasing a Virtual Box VM's disk size.

This might seem out of left field, but it's something that has come up many times recently and I've spent a bunch of time collecting the needed info so I wanted to share.  Anyway, let's get started!

Increasing the disk size

Let's start with where we are now.  Using the command "df -h" we can see current disk usage:

So we have a 24gb drive (/dev/sda2).  I want to increase this to 50 GB, what do I need to do?

1. Find the location of the virtual disk
2. Increase the disk size using the command VBoxManage modifyhd
3. Boot to a live CD and increase the partition size

Step 1: Find the location of the virtual disk

MacOS

Right-Click and choose "Show in finder"

Default path is /Users/[user name]/VirtualBox VMs/[VM's name]/

Windows: 

Right Click and choose "Show in Explorer"

Default is C:\Users\[User Name]\VirtualBox VMs\[VM Name]

Step 2: Increase the size of the disk from the CLI

Power down the VM before doing this step.

VirtualBox will only allow you to increase the size of a .vdi disk, not a .vmdk so this if you have VMDK you will need to clone it to a .vdi first.

NOTE: You need to update your PATH in Windows to use the "vboxmanage" command - run this from a cmd prompt to do this: PATH=%PATH%;c:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox

• Open a command prompt (or terminal window)
• 'cd' into the VM's directory

• Clone the disk to a .vdi with the command:

vboxmanage clonehd [old_VMDK_filename].vmdk "[new_filename].vdi --format vdi

• Increase the size of the .vdi with the command

vboxmanage modifyhd [new disk].vdi --resize [size in MB]

• Remove the old disk from the VM and add the new one

To Remove:

To Add:

Choose "Add Existing Disk"

Choose the .vdi disk you just created:

This is what it'll look like in the end:

Step 3: Boot to a Live CD and increase the size of the partition

You can download the gparted liveCD here:

http://gparted.org

You can use any distro you'd like, however these instructions will assume you're using this ISO.

Mount the CD (same steps as above, but choose the "Empty" CD drive rather then the HDD drive)

Once you have the CD mounted, power up the VM.  It will boot into the live CD:

Double-Click the "Gparted" icon on the desktop to launch the utility.

Once in the utility, click /dev/sda2 (or whatever partition you are expanding) and then choose "Resize"

Drag the partition bar all the way to the right and then hit "Resize/Move"

Click "Apply"

Once the operation is complete remove the live CD and reboot the VM.  Once the VM powers up it will now have the new disk size!

Now you can delete the old vmdk file (as it's just taking up space).