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Warning, only remotely interesting to computer folks. You have been warned.
I use VMWare for a whole lot of system testing. One consistent issue is filled drive space. It's a virtual drive, it would be nice if VMWare would just resize it; but it doesn't.
There are a number of ways to get the data of a smaller drive onto a bigger drive. All solutions will work with bare iron, too. ( Bare iron is virtualization buzz speak for actual hardware. ) My method is a free one.
You want a Linux LiveCD with the tools I'll describe. Knoppix has them, so does Insert, a Linux rescue distro that comes on the invaluable "Ultimate Boot CD".
1. Create a new hard drive on the VMWare machine of the desired size.
2. Point the CD ROM to the ISO of you LiveCD.
3. Boot on the CD.
4. At a terminal type "fdisk -l". This should show a drive device with a partition table and one with no partition table.
5. Raw copy time, the command is "dd if=source of=destination" e.g. "dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb"
6. Wait... When it's done, another "fdisk -l" will reveal each device has an identical partition table.
7. The problem, you probably want at least one partition bigger. Find your way to a GUI and run qtparted.
8. qtparted is a partition magic clone. Resize as you like. Done. "shutdown -h now"
9. In VMWare, take off the old drive and move the new drive to the address the old one occupied. e.g. IDE 0:1 to IDE 0:0
10. That's it...
Linux (ext3fs) doesn't care and accepts this kind of trick in style. Windows XP Pro wants a reboot for "New Hardware" and then it's happy. Windows 2003 Server was brain dead and couldn't quite figure out the drive size had changed; some places knew the real size, other places were stuck on the prior size.
Just had to share, because I've been fighting my VMWare Windows 2003 Server for what seems like all day.
I use VMWare for a whole lot of system testing. One consistent issue is filled drive space. It's a virtual drive, it would be nice if VMWare would just resize it; but it doesn't.
There are a number of ways to get the data of a smaller drive onto a bigger drive. All solutions will work with bare iron, too. ( Bare iron is virtualization buzz speak for actual hardware. ) My method is a free one.
You want a Linux LiveCD with the tools I'll describe. Knoppix has them, so does Insert, a Linux rescue distro that comes on the invaluable "Ultimate Boot CD".
1. Create a new hard drive on the VMWare machine of the desired size.
2. Point the CD ROM to the ISO of you LiveCD.
3. Boot on the CD.
4. At a terminal type "fdisk -l". This should show a drive device with a partition table and one with no partition table.
5. Raw copy time, the command is "dd if=source of=destination" e.g. "dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb"
6. Wait... When it's done, another "fdisk -l" will reveal each device has an identical partition table.
7. The problem, you probably want at least one partition bigger. Find your way to a GUI and run qtparted.
8. qtparted is a partition magic clone. Resize as you like. Done. "shutdown -h now"
9. In VMWare, take off the old drive and move the new drive to the address the old one occupied. e.g. IDE 0:1 to IDE 0:0
10. That's it...
Linux (ext3fs) doesn't care and accepts this kind of trick in style. Windows XP Pro wants a reboot for "New Hardware" and then it's happy. Windows 2003 Server was brain dead and couldn't quite figure out the drive size had changed; some places knew the real size, other places were stuck on the prior size.
Just had to share, because I've been fighting my VMWare Windows 2003 Server for what seems like all day.
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