Increase Drive/Image size with freeware tools

[mlandel]

Posted elsewhere, but since it seems to be a common question, I'm posting it here. . .

I solved this issue as follows for FAT32 partitions (dynamic sized):

1) download the following freeware (google to find):
g4u - this is ghost for unix and will copy any FAT32 drive (OS neutral)
presizer - this will will resize the copied drive/partition to use the added space
2) create a new drive/image that is the size that you want
3) add the new drive/image to your VM or create a new VM that has both drives/images
4) boot the g4u cd image to copy the small drive/image to the large drive/image.
This takes a while.
5) boot from the presizer floppy image and run presizer on the larger drive/image. This adds the unused space to the parition, making it a copy of the smaller drive, only bigger.
6) arvhive the small .hdd file for safety and transition to the new larger .hdd. I change the names to transisition as I like my primary drive image file to have the same name as the VM.

That's it!. It's actually reasonably straight-forward and makes use of freely avaialbe tools. This is the same process that can be used on real PC's to transition from a smaller to a larger/newer hard drive and is OS neutral (the OS on the drive/image does not matter)

Matt

[engrProf]

Any suggestions if my 4MB C: drive is NTFS?

[peterwor]

Thanks for this tip but I'm a little 'slow' on this topic.
In step 4 you say "boot the g4u cd image to copy the small drive/image to the large drive/image"

Could you elaboarte? What do you mean "boot the g4u image"?
When I tell PW to mount this g4u.iso image at startup on the CD/DVD device and use explorer to open the drive I only see 2 non executable files. a .cat and . .fs file.
The stupid question is what are these files? What am I actually supposed to do here?

I guess the same question applies to the presizer image. I have this file that is a zip file called pres143.zip but it contains a windows executable, how do I mount or boot from this zip file or did I get the wrong file?

If someone could perhaps elaboarte on this great hint I'd really appreciate it.

TIA,
Peter

[engrProf]

Do you have any suggestions for someone whose drive is NTFS?

[Andrew @ Parallels]

For NTFS you could use commercial software like Acronis Partion Expert.

[engrProf]

For NTFS you could use commercial software like Acronis Partion Expert.

Thanks *very* much for fixing networking in Beta6. Also thanks for providing Image Tools.

I expanded my 4G HD to 10G, downloaded the demo version of Acronis and installed it. It let me create a new partition in the free space on my expanded HD, but it won't let me increase the free space on my C: drive unless I purchase the software for $50.

Now I'm all for paying for something that's useful to me, but something sticks in my craw about paying Acronis more than Parallels cost me (yep, I forked out the $40 for the real thing when it arrives), to perform a one-time HD expansion. On the other hand, at this point I have 290 MB of free space on my C: drive, and the VM is basically useless because I can do very little with that amount of free space. If the alternative to forking out $50 is to create a new drive and re-install all my software, the time that takes might be worth the $50. But do the comparison -- $40 for something I'm going to use just about every day (once I get this free space problem cleared up) and will make my life a WHOLE LOT better, versus $50 to save me maybe one day of labor.

Partition Magic costs $18.99, half of what Acronis costs.

Also, RussGJohnson posted a free solution on the Technical Discussions forum, Autoexpanding Harddrive thread. I'm going to try it -- software downloading now, will post results here.

[engrProf]

...RussGJohnson posted a free solution on the Technical Discussions forum, Autoexpanding Harddrive thread. I'm going to try it -- software downloading now, will post results here.

It works beautifully. I posted detailed instructions in http://forum.parallels.com/thread1278.html on how to download SystemRescueCD, a free Linux hard drive utility which includes a clone of Partition Magic, and how to use it in conjunction with the newly released Image Tool to expand your hard drive. If it works for you, please be nice and pay the developer something.

[mlandel]

g4u: This is an image that contains a self-contained linux installation. You boot from the image and you will see instructions covering the multiple ways that it can copy drives.
presizer: This needs to be placed on a DOS system floppy image, for which images can be found on-line. Boot from the floppy, then run presizer.

Looks like the image tool has been released, so that (hopefully) should obviate this thread. Note however, since g4u is designed to copy across a network, it is a great tool for copying a drive from a "real" PC over to a VM.

[greck]

I can highly recommend the GParted LiveCD (http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php)... it worked just as well on my VM as it does on my real hardware.