Resize Windows Partition in VMWare
September 9th, 2009
So I played around with VMWare tonight and figured out how to resize the disk without data loss or too much trouble. First time took about 30 minutes. Second time took about 10. I used GParted Live but you can use Partition Magic or any other third party software that comes on a bootable ISO that will do active partition resizing.
BACKUP THE USER DATA JUST IN CASE.
Shutdown the VM and go into VMWare Settings -> Hard Disks -> resize the disk to the desired size. (unfortunately Windows won’t just recognize the increase in space to the boot partition so you must do the steps listed below)
Download the GParted Live CD ISO (http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php)
Attach the ISO to the VM as a CD/DVD
At VM boot press F2 to go into setup and change the boot order so that cd is before HD. (This is really hard since you only have about a 1 second window and you have to make sure that you are directing the keyboard input into the VM).
You should now be able to boot to the GParted ISO. Go with the default settings for booting into the ISO.
Launch GParted and click move/resize disk
Resize the disk to the new size you want Windows to see and apply the change.
Disconnect the ISO, reboot and check in Windows to ensure that it recognizes the change. Chkdsk should run before Windows startup which is normal since Windows recognizes a change to the boot disk.
***Be sure to take a snapshot prior to making these changes so that you can roll back if necessary. I did test the snapshot functionality with rolling back after the change and it does work.***
I really like VMWare Fusion
So I played around with VMWare tonight and figured out how to resize the disk without data loss or too much trouble. First time took about 30 minutes. Second time took about 10. I used GParted Live but you can use Partition Magic or any other third party software that comes on a bootable ISO that will do active partition resizing.
BACKUP THE USER DATA JUST IN CASE!!!
- Shutdown the VM and go into VMWare Settings -> Hard Disks -> resize the disk to the desired size. (unfortunately Windows won’t just recognize the increase in space to the boot partition so you must do the steps listed below)
- Download the GParted Live CD ISO (http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php)
- Attach the ISO to the VM as a CD/DVD
- At VM boot press F2 to go into setup and change the boot order so that cd is before HD. (This is really hard since you only have about a 1 second window and you have to make sure that you are directing the keyboard input into the VM).
- You should now be able to boot to the GParted ISO. Go with the default settings for booting into the ISO.
- Launch GParted and click move/resize disk
- Resize the disk to the new size you want Windows to see and apply the change.
- Disconnect the ISO, reboot and check in Windows to ensure that it recognizes the change. Chkdsk should run before Windows startup which is normal since Windows recognizes a change to the boot disk.
***Be sure to take a snapshot prior to making these changes so that you can roll back if necessary. I did test the snapshot functionality with rolling back after the change and it does work.***
I think I like VMWare Fusion. Still not sure about Windows though… 
Tim Seymour lives in Washington, DC. He works as a Systems Administrator for 
