How to resize a VirtualBox fixed size virtual drive (.vdi) on Mac
So you created a disk for your Windows or Linux VirtualBox VM and you made the mistake of not creating the drive as a dynamically expanding storage drive, you chose fixed size.
Now you’re running out of space and all your Google searches point you to stupid posts on the virtualbox.org forums that lead to nowhere, specially if you are a MacOSX user, look no further, you’ve found the solution to your problem on this post.
VirtualBox for Mac comes with a tool called VBoxManage, this tool is all you need to resize your virtual disk.
When you’re using the VBoxManage tool make sure your VM is not running, stop it completely to be safe.
Step 0. Backup your current drive (optional)
I recommend that before you do anything you clone your existing drive, just in case…
You can clone your drive using guess what? yes, the VBoxManage tool. No need to download any external tools.
$ VboxManage clonehd <path to your original drive> <path of the copy>
in my computer it looked exactly like this:
$ VBoxManage clonehd /Users/gubatron/VirtualBox VMs/windows7-64bit/windows7-64bit.vdi /Users/gubatron/windows7-64bit.cloned.vdi 0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100%
If you don’t know where your .vdi file is, it’s very simple, right Click your VM > Settings > Storage, and mouse over the .vdi to see it’s physical location on your Mac hardrive.
Step 1. Resize!
The command to resize is:
$ VBoxManage modifyhd <path to your vdi> --resize <new size in megabytes>
In my case I had a 20GB drive that I wanted to double in size (40GB), a quick Google search for “40GB to megabytes” yields the number 40960, so that’s what I put on my –resize parameter.
This is how it looked for me:
$ VBoxManage modifyhd /Users/gubatron/VirtualBox VMs/windows7-64bit/windows7-64bit.vdi --resize 40960 0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100%
The ‘resizing’ is almost immediate.
Step 2. (Re)Start VirtualBox
After you’ve physically resized your drive, both VirtualBox and your OS should know about the changes.
At this point, clicking on your VM in the VirtualBox window will show that it still has the old size:
Before: (Note the size of the drive at the bottom of the image)
After doing the resize, shutdown completely your VirtualBox, and launch it again. When you see the information about the storage drives attached to your VM you should see the new disk size.
After: (Note the size of the drive at the bottom of the image)
Step 3. Let your OS know the new logical size of the drive
When you start your VM, it won’t know right away what the new size of the disk is, you’ll have let the operating system know that there is additional space it can use.
If your VM is running Windows 7, the way to let the operating system know that it can use the additional space on your drive is very straight forward.
Click on the Windows (Start) Icon on the Bar > Right Click on “Computer” > Manage (You’ll need to be an Administrator)
The “Computer Management” window will open, in it go to:
Storage > Disk Management > Right Click on the partition you want to extend.
Select the option that says “Extend”, a Wizard will open, just hit Next until it ends if you want to use the whole space.
After you’re done, if you refresh your “Computer” on the File explorer the resized drive should show right away
That’s it, enjoy and let me know how it went.
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October 9th, 2011 at 6:09 pm
[...] IN. TURN ON. TUNE OUT.USB External Hard DriveAnalysis of hidden data in the NTFS file systemHow to resize a VirtualBox fixed size virtual drive (.vdi) on Mac – Gubatron.com [...]
October 11th, 2011 at 6:08 pm
Nice, except for one small detail. The screenshot you show is for a dynamically allocated disk. You can tell because the actual and virtual size is not the same as t would be on a fixed size drive. Secondly the text obscured by the tooltip is not “Fixed size storage” but rather something with ellipses at the end which does not fit in the space allocated.
Trying this process with VirtualBox 4.1.4 results in the message:
Progress state: VBOX_E_NOT_SUPPORTED
VBoxManage: error: Resize hard disk operation for this format is not implemented yet!
October 11th, 2011 at 6:55 pm
AH but now the solution is made obvious once I noticed something When you clone the original drive to make a backup, the tool creates a dynamically allocated disk, even if the original was fixed size. So at that point you can treat your ‘original’ disk as the backup, and expand the newly created clone.
October 18th, 2011 at 10:06 pm
[...] How to resize a VirtualBox fixed size virtual drive (.vdi) on Mac (gubatron.com) [...]
October 27th, 2011 at 3:44 pm
I dont have .vdi but i’ve .vhd (VirtualBox 4.1.4) My problem is that I don’t know where do i have to write the command – in the terminal or somewhere else outside the Virtualbox program? ‘Coz when I wrote the command into the terminal, it said: “command not found”. What could I do? (I’m new to mac, sorry)
November 3rd, 2011 at 10:20 am
Using Virtual Media Manager copy your VHD file to a new VDI one. Then type the command from the Virtualbox installation folder.
November 10th, 2011 at 3:47 pm
Hi
I am the same problem.
I need to resize a vdi (4.1.6) installed on Mac OSX.
Executing
VBoxManage modifyhd mystorage.vdi –resize 9000
returns :
VBOX_E_NOT_SUPPORTED
What’s wrong ?
Regards
Marcus
November 11th, 2011 at 11:21 pm
hopefully that vdi is not too old… did you google that VBOX_E_NOT_SUPPORTED error?
November 18th, 2011 at 12:11 am
Hey – the guide is really nice. I’m only having trouble with the disk management part at the end. I upgraded my 20 GB to a 100GB using methods 1-2 above, however, when I got to part 3, the 20 GB “Disk 0″ was still there even when under my SATA port 0, it says ((italicized) Normal, 100.00GB)… Any idea how I can get it to say 80 GB unallocated in my Windows 7 Disk Management Part?
January 18th, 2012 at 12:30 pm
Thanks for the tip! It helped!
January 23rd, 2012 at 10:49 pm
How do I merge the disk on Windows XP guest?
March 11th, 2012 at 1:12 pm
worked like a charm…thanks!
March 19th, 2012 at 3:30 am
Thanks a lot for the tip! Worked fine for me!
April 3rd, 2012 at 12:24 am
Worked great! Thank you for this post.
April 9th, 2012 at 8:14 pm
This is the best guide for expanding fixed virtual hd on the internet. Thanks a lot.
April 20th, 2012 at 11:03 am
I’ve followed the instructions and the VirtualBox shows the HDD’s new size, but from Disk Management of the guest OS (Windows 7 x64) the disk stills shows the old size (it doesn’t show the unllocated piece).
Any ideas?
May 20th, 2012 at 11:55 pm
Hello, please help ! I tried this but it seems it has some syntax error, (I m not used to mac terminal) so I wrote this
VBoxManage modifyhd /Users/Me/VirtualBox VMs/windows xp/windows xp.vdi –resize 40960
but it shows Syntax error: Invalid parameter ‘VMs/windows’
Also I should note that although it finds VirtualBox VMs with ls at Me directory, I cant find it with cd. How can that be? I am so confused.
And last but not least, I use a vhd instead of vdi, but I can locate both of them in the folder. Which should I choose? please help !!
Thank you !
May 30th, 2012 at 10:08 am
Hey Luna, try this
VBoxManage modifyhd “/Users/Me/VirtualBox VMs/windows xp/windows xp.vdi” -–resize 40960
June 20th, 2012 at 12:31 am
To Jake and Luna (and anyone else having the same problem): If you try to do this and run into the problem that the unallocated space is not appearing, it is probably because you are using the “snapshots” feature of VirtualBox. You have probably only changed the “base image” of the virtual machine. I just did this, and I hope that I haven’t messed up my snapshots. Probably the best thing to do is to get rid of all your snapshots before trying to do this.
For some more info, see https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/9103
June 20th, 2012 at 1:14 am
Oops, sorry, I meant Jake and Francesc, not Luna (hers is a different error I’m afraid).
I have since tried to delete my snapshots so I could just repeat the disk resize on the current state, but VirtualBox balks when I try to delete the last snapshot (presumably because the disk sizes don’t match between the states it is trying to merge). I am now attempting to clone the disk; hopefully I’ll end up with one “current state” that can then have the disk resized. I’m worried, though, that I’ve done some irreversible changes to the VM.
They really should include a warning about resizing virtual machine disks when using snapshots, if it is possible to irreversibly damage them. I guess I should have done my own backup before attempting this.
June 20th, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Just an update: I was able to get this working by making a clone of the original VM. Just make sure to choose “Full clone” (not “Linked clone”), and “Current machine state” (not “All states”). This gave me a VM with just one “Current state”, which I was then able to resize the disk for in the manner described in the article.
June 22nd, 2012 at 11:16 am
Luna,
You should put path in double quotes, stupid moron.
VBoxManage modifyhd “/Users/Me/VirtualBox VMs/windows xp/windows xp.vdi” –resize 40960
June 26th, 2012 at 1:59 pm
Great! Thank you!
June 26th, 2012 at 9:16 pm
Thanks for the information this has helped save my a lot of time!
July 29th, 2012 at 6:31 pm
It worked beautifully. Thank you!!
August 27th, 2012 at 2:55 pm
Great! Thank you!
September 13th, 2012 at 9:40 am
Hi, Thanks man! It work great!!
And Thanks to Chuckvdl that pin pointing the problem with fixed size disk!
September 26th, 2012 at 4:02 am
i also need help!!
i get syntax error: invalid parameter: ’50000′
it complains about the size i ask, why is that? i googled it and everything and i can’t find the answer!
October 2nd, 2012 at 10:35 pm
Saved my life!
October 4th, 2012 at 7:17 pm
i got Syntax error: Mandatory output file parameter missing when i try to clone it and another Syntax error when try to resize it, please help
October 23rd, 2012 at 12:47 pm
[...] to Gubatron who got me most of the way with this [...]
October 27th, 2012 at 4:10 pm
Thanks Gubatron, this worked like a dream (the tip about putting the filename in inverted commas was also invaluable, wojtas) and it’s really saved my bacon.
October 28th, 2012 at 7:03 am
This totally worked!!!! Thank you so much!!! going to Palaver’s site helped too!!!
November 20th, 2012 at 11:38 pm
Great. That works. BTW, the images in the post are not showing up
November 27th, 2012 at 7:08 am
thanks for the reminder, gotta see what’s up with the image folder.
December 4th, 2012 at 1:03 am
images fixed!
February 13th, 2013 at 12:54 pm
Thank you very much. It was a very helpful tip.
May 7th, 2013 at 2:46 am
This solved a big headache of mine! Thank you
May 8th, 2013 at 1:55 pm
I’ve gotten to the part where I’m supposed to use the extend feature. Mine is greyed out. I think it’s because I had set the Disk to Dynamically allocate the space. How can I still extend this drive?
Thanks!