Expanding a fixed-size virtual disk

Having created a 5gig fixed-size Virtual disk on a NTFS partition (Fat16/32
has a 2/4gig limit) I ran out of space after installing a disk hungry OS (XP
Pro) and applications (MS Office and Visual Studio 6).

I then converted the fixed-size Virtual Disk to a dynamically expanding disk.
as in the Virtual PC help "Create a dynamically expanding disk from a
fixed-size disk"

This should according to the help allow the disk to expand in increments of
2gig.
After completing this lenghty process (2 hours) the OS on the virtual disk
still only reports 10meg free space.

An obvious work around is to create a new dynamically expanding virtual disk
and attach it to the virtual machine as "hard disk 2".
This give the vitual machine more disk space but it is not on its C: drive
where it is needed.

Any similar problems or a magic tool/option that I missed?

 

There is no way to expand the size of a virtual hard disk. A dynamic
hard disk can expand up to the size of the hard disk (so in this case -
5GB). Your only option is to create a new disk and use an imaging tool
to transfer the data.
--
Cheers,
Benjamin Armstrong
===============================
Virtual machine Program Manager

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
You assume all risk for your use.

 

No, a fixed disk is just that fixed. It can't be expanded to a larger
size. Converting to a dynamically expanding disk won't change the
maximum limit that was set when you created it.

Once you set the size limit of a VHD you can't increase or decrease
it.

You'll need to create a new, larger VHD and use standard methods of
moving the data from the old one to the new one.
Steve Jain, Microsoft MVP for Virtual PC for Windows
Website: http://www.essjae.com
*** All posts are provided AS-IS, no warranty, no QoS ***

 

Well why dont you create one more disk (Say 20 GB this time!) and use
partition magic or some such tool to merge it with c: ?
Thanks
San