Has anyone resized a Parallels 3 hdd?

[shaunconn]

Hi

I can't follow the "standard" procedure detailed on these forums, since parallels 3 no longer has image tools. I copy/create larger, then using gparted, but it gparted just seems to see 2 disks, and won't let me extend the first partition over the second.

I'm using Vista as the OS - if that makes any difference.

Anyone from the parallels team care to offer me an official resize guide, now image tools have been removed?

Regards

Shaun

[mkummer]

Seems not possible at the time being...

[unused_user_name]

I thought the image tool was going to be integrated into the Parallels explorer??

Andrew? What happend to the image resize ability?

[wesley]

This was kinda bizarre for me, too. I resized mine by another means.

[dan]

This was kinda bizarre for me, too. I resized mine by another means.
Surely you're not going to simply leave it at this! Details? :)

[amnesiac]

I ended up having to re-install v2.5 and resize a backup of the hdd (as it couldn't read the v3.0 format) - did the gParted trick as described here: http://lifehacker.com/software/parallels/how-to-resize-a-windows-partition-in-parallels-232558.php then I then went back to v3.0 - it shouldn't have to be this involved.

[shaunconn]

Hi

Please tell me that uninstalling 3.0 and going back to 2.5 isn't my only option here? :-(

Is there really no other way?

Shaun

[unused_user_name]

Well, you could always make a new disk and use somthing like 'dd' under a linux live CD to copy one disk to another, then resize the new disk's partition.

It works with real hardware, why not a VM....

(Yeah its a PITA. Where did the disk resizer go?)

[amnesiac]

Is there any official response from Parallels regarding this issue?

[shaunconn]

Hi

The dd thing doesn't seem to work with the Parallels VM... I created a larger partition, set it to BOOT flag with gparted, and dd'd the old partition over the new larger one. Changed Parallels to boot from the new partition, but it just says no OS found.

So, I'm not really left with *any* way of increasing my VM without downgrading.

Hmm.

Shaun

[wesley]

Mmmkay, sorry to hang you dry so long. This is how I did it. It's not a resize in the sense that you stretch the original file, but the end result is basically the same. I've done this with WinXP installs.

1. Duplicate the .hdd file of the VM (I'll call the original #1 and the duplicate #2).
2. Create a new empty .hdd file (#3) of the desired size.
3. Map #3 as 0:0 (Primary Master).
4. Install the OS.
5. Map the #1 to 0:0, #2 to 1:0, and #3 to 1:1.
6. Once booted, remove everything except for boot-related files on #3, and copy over everything from #2 to #3.
7. Map #3 as 0:0 again and if the booting is successful, discard #1 and #2.

Now, XP and Vista have significantly different boot-related files. This Wikipedia article might be of some help in identifying what to preserve/remove in case of Vista:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winload.exe

In case of XP, I preserved NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, and BOOT.INI.

When in doubt, you could make a backup of #3 after stage 4 and play around with the boot-related files to see what happens.

[Ankou]

Hello folks

We are going to deliver VM HDD resizing solution with the next updates, please excuse us for any inconvenience caused. You can still make more free hard drive space available for the Guest OS by adding one more HDD to the VM configuration (Edit - Virtual Machine - Add - Hard Disk), then just partition and format you new HDD in the VM. For example, in Windows XP it can be done from Start - Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management - Storage - Disk Management.

[wesley]

Some weird programs insist on installing right smack on C:, with no option of installing anywhere else. I personally had to 'expand' the drive with that ghetto method I just posted above because this game I now wanted to try out inside the VM had that sort of nasty tendency.

That 'next update' with updated Image Tool can't come fast enough for lots of people. I wish you well, Parallels dev team.

[Wally_Mac]

Ankou,
I would be one those people who urgently needs that new VM HDD resizing tool. My current setup has my "Windows" VM HDD almost full, and without the Image Tools utility... No real viable or useful way of changing/growing/stretching the size.

The sooner the better....

[Andrew @ Parallels]

We are working on it very hard. It will be included into one of the nearest updates.

[chabig]

Can't you make a second hard drive, as suggested, and then ghost the installation to the new drive?

[wesley]

Well, if you have Ghost, I don't see why not. But I don't have Ghost.

[koolaidman]

Ghost doesn't work - I created a new image and ghosted my windows install to it, but Parallels won't boot from it.

I even tried cloning the partition with the linux tool GPartEd but it just refuses to boot.

[Wally_Mac]

I too have tried several methods to resize (expand) my current parallels 3 HDD (running Windows XP) without viable success.

:) Although I'm a big fan of Parallels Desktop for Mac, and the features / functions are terrific... had I known that version 3 was going to cause me this problem I would have either..
(1) resized the HDD while still running v2.5, prior to upgrading to v3
(2) avoided installing the upgrade until the "HDD resizing utility" was in place for v3

:mad: It sure would have been good if Parallels had included a short statement about resizing the HDD in the pre-upgrade installation process. Simply finding out after the fact (that a key feature/function has been removed) should not be how software suppliers operate.

:rolleyes: That said, I certainly hope that the new "HDD resizing" utility is released very soon.

[1pauper1]

Mmmkay, sorry to hang you dry so long. This is how I did it. It's not a resize in the sense that you stretch the original file, but the end result is basically the same. I've done this with WinXP installs.

1. Duplicate the .hdd file of the VM (I'll call the original #1 and the duplicate #2).
2. Create a new empty .hdd file (#3) of the desired size.
3. Map #3 as 0:0 (Primary Master).
4. Install the OS.
5. Map the #1 to 0:0, #2 to 1:0, and #3 to 1:1.
6. Once booted, remove everything except for boot-related files on #3, and copy over everything from #2 to #3.
7. Map #3 as 0:0 again and if the booting is successful, discard #1 and #2.

Now, XP and Vista have significantly different boot-related files. This Wikipedia article might be of some help in identifying what to preserve/remove in case of Vista:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winload.exe

In case of XP, I preserved NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, and BOOT.INI.

When in doubt, you could make a backup of #3 after stage 4 and play around with the boot-related files to see what happens.
wesley,

in step #2
how do you make a new empty .hdd

[wesley]

When the VM is not running, you can go to the configuration screen and add a device... add a hard disk there, and in doing so you can make a new one of the size that you desire.

[ptruskier]

I just ran into this last night. So far, I have been pleased with the 3.0 upgrade, but I must say that I find this really annoying.

To remove a feature (which, based on a thread on this forum, is used by many) from an upgrade without any mention is a bad business practice, IMHO. The "sorry for any inconvenience" mea culpa in this thread hardly suffices.

Just as version 3 warns us that it is about to convert a virtual disk to a format that cannot be used by previous versions, it should warn us that the converted disk cannot be re-sized.

[Robster]

Damn...

Just read this thread.

I actually want/need to go the other direction.

My VM is set as 32Gb expanding and I want to set it as 10Gb fixed.

From all the comments here I am guessing I am out of luck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cheers.

Robin

[Robster]

Okay

I successfully resized my hard drive!!!!!

I downloaded a copy of Acronis Trueimage.

Created a new VM complete with HD file for XP and when it was all ready to install XP I closed it down.

I then attached this HD image to my existing VM instance, installed Acronis on teh original HD file and then told Acronis to clone the 32Gb drive to my new 9Gb drive.

It did this fine, once finished I started my new VM and it booted fine.

I am happy and I will probably buy Trueimage as I can use tit to back up my Bootcamp partition as well.

Cheers.

Robin

[salvomic]

We are working on it very hard. It will be included into one of the nearest updates.

I hope you could release soon a new "Image Tool" version for Parallels 3.0 :-)
I need it also to try to resize "Haiku" (BeOS derived) hdd image.
I need only to resize the virtual hard disk, please help, as previously this method worked well with Parallels 2.5 and Haiku.

Many thanks in advance!

Regards

Salvo

[Garyunc]

When I was on 2.5 the hdd file last modified date would change each time I used the hdd file. I upgraded to 3.0 and now it is stuck on the upgrade date and time. Is this normal? The VM appears to work fine but I like to backup my hdd to an external drive for safety and I want to make sure that it I am backing up the right data. Any advice?

[patrickmast]

We are going to deliver VM HDD resizing solution with the next updates, please excuse us for any inconvenience caused. You can still make more free hard drive space available for the Guest OS by adding one more HDD to the VM configuration (Edit - Virtual Machine - Add - Hard Disk), then just partition and format you new HDD in the VM. For example, in Windows XP it can be done from Start - Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management - Storage - Disk Management.

Yes, but you can only add 4 HDD's to a VM. Can this be extended?

--
Sincerely,

Patrick Mast,
http://www.WinFakt.be
http://www.xHarbour.com

[Intruder]

Okay

I successfully resized my hard drive!!!!!

I downloaded a copy of Acronis Trueimage.

Created a new VM complete with HD file for XP and when it was all ready to install XP I closed it down.

I then attached this HD image to my existing VM instance, installed Acronis on teh original HD file and then told Acronis to clone the 32Gb drive to my new 9Gb drive.

It did this fine, once finished I started my new VM and it booted fine.

I am happy and I will probably buy Trueimage as I can use tit to back up my Bootcamp partition as well.

Cheers.

Robin

Would this work to move a VM to Bootcamp? Just mounting the Bootcamp partition vice the new VM instance?

[Robster]

Possibly.

I am sure I saw somewhere on their site that it allows for moving between physical and virtual hardware.

Of course I could have been dreaming!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Robin

[Doobla]

We are working on it very hard. It will be included into one of the nearest updates.
Can you guys post a roadmap or something? When you released 2.5 there were a lot of bugs but no updates until the 3.0 release. Do you intend to release bug fix releases or do we wait for 4.0 and pay the upgrade fee so that we can get this and other issues fixed?

How are we to know unless you folks tell us what we can expect and when?

[SD Macman]

Okay

I successfully resized my hard drive!!!!!

I downloaded a copy of Acronis Trueimage.

Created a new VM complete with HD file for XP and when it was all ready to install XP I closed it down.

I then attached this HD image to my existing VM instance, installed Acronis on teh original HD file and then told Acronis to clone the 32Gb drive to my new 9Gb drive.

It did this fine, once finished I started my new VM and it booted fine.

I am happy and I will probably buy Trueimage as I can use tit to back up my Bootcamp partition as well.

Cheers.

Robin

The Acronis technique works. Somewhere on an older post I had found a variation of this which worked for for me in XP Pro SP2 with Parallels 3.0.

In the VM add a new hard drive. Restart VM. use acronis to clone the original drive to the new one (which can be smaller or larger depending on your needs). Then shut down the VM. go to edit VM. For Hard Disk 2 change the settings of this new drive to IDE 0:0 (in advanced settings). It gave me a message saying that position was taken and asking if I wanted to swap it. Said yes. Started up VM and was all done. Last step would be deleting old HDD (which now is labled Hard Disk 2).

[salvomic]

The Acronis technique works. Somewhere on an older post I had found a variation of this which worked for for me in XP Pro SP2 with Parallels 3.0.

In the VM add a new hard drive. ....

ok, this work well for Windows.
But not if we want resize a virtual hd first to restart the VM, with another OS. For example to use Haiku (BeOS derived) as a Guest OS, it's possible to download a "nightly build", then - with PD 2.5 - to resize it with Image Tool, then to use it as well. If the VM start without to resize first Haiku gives an error. With PD 3.0 all these operations are not possibile.
There are sure other reasons to resize first to start VM, so IMHO we need still a new Image Tool for PD 3.0, and we hope the Parallels Team would give us it very soon :-)

Regards
Salvo

[Joesixpack]

For the record, a quick "Me Too" here. I have been looking like mad before I discovered that the rezie option is gone.

Any of the work arounds is a big PITA, hope the rezize option gets added back real soon!

[GAH2343]

I don't understand how you did this "Created a new VM complete with HD file for XP and when it was all ready to install XP I closed it down." And I wish I did. Thanks. G

[MarkMc]

It would have been nice if in the list of "features" for 3.0 they said they took out the ability to re-size your hard disk images. What's the update on the utility? I am really stuck right now and need to resize my partition like yesterday.

[1pauper1]

right-on markmc,

no resize, still have not received my free update,
and the competition has gone universal binary.

this was an $80 lesson that i will not throw any more money at.

[Robster]

Of course if you need to do it that urgently you could follow the route I took and posted earlier!!!!!!

There is a 30 day eval of Acronis Trueimage.

The only reason I have not purchased a copy is it will not run in Boot Camp!!!!!!!!!

Robin

[qbit9]

Mmmkay, sorry to hang you dry so long. This is how I did it. It's not a resize in the sense that you stretch the original file, but the end result is basically the same. I've done this with WinXP installs.

1. Duplicate the .hdd file of the VM (I'll call the original #1 and the duplicate #2).
2. Create a new empty .hdd file (#3) of the desired size.
3. Map #3 as 0:0 (Primary Master).
4. Install the OS.
5. Map the #1 to 0:0, #2 to 1:0, and #3 to 1:1.
6. Once booted, remove everything except for boot-related files on #3, and copy over everything from #2 to #3.
7. Map #3 as 0:0 again and if the booting is successful, discard #1 and #2.

Now, XP and Vista have significantly different boot-related files. This Wikipedia article might be of some help in identifying what to preserve/remove in case of Vista:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winload.exe

In case of XP, I preserved NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, and BOOT.INI.

When in doubt, you could make a backup of #3 after stage 4 and play around with the boot-related files to see what happens.

DON'T TRY THIS. I did and it foobarred my original install. Good thing I had a backup on another machine. But still I lost a day's work.

[RPElliott]

I tried that but had no luck, since there is no option for creating a second HD with WIN2000 and Parallels 3.0. So the VM that I created to keep my bookkeeping safe is limited to the size I set at the beginning.

It is true that I can add a second HD on my Work VM which runs WIN XP, but as the other man pointed out the majority of the Windows software out there still requires that you install it on drive C: so unless the space problem is mainly due to the amount of data that you are using a second drive is of limited aid.

So we really do need a resizing function which works for WIN2000 and WIN XP and we need it soon. Does anyone know how the development going?

All the best,
Ralph

[GregMP]

Hello folks

We are going to deliver VM HDD resizing solution with the next updates, please excuse us for any inconvenience caused. You can still make more free hard drive space available for the Guest OS by adding one more HDD to the VM configuration (Edit - Virtual Machine - Add - Hard Disk), then just partition and format you new HDD in the VM. For example, in Windows XP it can be done from Start - Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management - Storage - Disk Management.
I've set up a second virtual HDD several times, my goal is to have a new, plain, 3000MB, static partition for paging virtual memory for Windows. Every time I set up the drive and try to start from the boot camp master partition, I receive this message:

More than one Windows partitions are found. This is not a standard Boot Camp configuration. Please refer to the Parallels Desktop for Mac User Guide, Using Boot Camp Windows XP Installation chapter for instructions on how to configure Parallels virtual machine in case of a non-standard Boot Camp configuration on your Macintosh computer.

From what I've read, this appeared to be a dumb as nails stop-gap sollution to the removal of the drive expansion tool.

Could someone help me out here? I feel I'm missing something very basic.

[GregMP]

Wow, responsive forum, seems that both the members and the admins are confused by Parallels.

There, I've done it, I've wasted two half-days trying to get this to work with no help, and no logical explanation in the Parallels PDF manual. This is really exciting software, I've never been so happy to piss away my money.

Would one of the admins please start addressing questions? This is a useless forum otherwise.

[brkirch]

The latest update (http://www.parallels.com/en/download/desktop/) adds Parallels Image Tool back and it should allow you to resize your Parallels Desktop 3 disk images.

[GregMP]

Many thanks, I apologize for snapping and losing my cool.

[DarkPrinc3]

What a stupid program, this thread shouldn't have been going on for nearly as long as it has.

How do I REDUCE the size of my hard drive space. I have windows, thats it... it shouldn't eat 32Gigs of my memory. Image tool only lets you increase. Compactor isn't doing anything to help either. I upgraded to 4650.

DP3

[DarkPrinc3]

Here's an article on how to transfer a parallels drive to a VMWare... the minute there is a sure fire way for me to resize this thing, I am dropping parallels for VMWare. I hate to bad mouth anyone, but this is currently and inferior product with horrible support. Hopefully they can clean up their act or they'll just end up losing more business.

http://johnadolan.typepad.com/viantsolutions/2007/05/parallels_to_vm.html

DP3

[Andrew @ Parallels]

What a stupid program, this thread shouldn't have been going on for nearly as long as it has.

How do I REDUCE the size of my hard drive space. I have windows, thats it... it shouldn't eat 32Gigs of my memory. Image tool only lets you increase. Compactor isn't doing anything to help either. I upgraded to 4650.

DP3

DarkPrinc3,

Please try to run Parallels Compressor from menu Actions. It should help to optimize size of your virtual hard disk.

[sra]

I just upgraded w/o the knowledge it would prevent my disk from being expandable. What happened to expandable? I NEED help. I depend on this setup for my livelyhood. My disk image appears to be a .dmg not the .hdd you are speaking of. I am not as computer literate and the directions you gave do not make sense to me. Any chance I could have specific directions, point by point? The "mapping" and "x:x" and where to find the files to save loose me in the dust. I really need this as my disk is completely full. the reason I went with this setup in the first place was because of the expandable disk image feature. Had I known about this I would have never gone with this setup. I have got to think may other people are in the same boat. Anything you could offer would be most appreciated.

[ericshapland@mac.com]

apparently not...

[Ynot]

ericshapland@mac.com say good bye for your data!!

[Ynot]

Ah, ok, i tell what concrete ericshapland@mac.com did wrong.

He changed whole disk size, ok, fine. But in storages section he did not add anything that can store data on free space. So, all data that he tried to write after the existing storage will go to the information heaven. )

And, of course you should not change the storage section Begin and End parameters, because the file that store your data has structure that can be corrupted in case of incorrect parameters of storage.

[ericshapland@mac.com]

I've taken my post down in response. Can you tell me what else should have been done? I haven't had a problem with it so far but I don't want to either and have gone back to my back up file. I'm just interested to know.

ta

[fred 121]

Same issue for me.

My HD is running out of space. I have a HDD file of 24Gig out of which 14Gig are empty and I would like to get them back.

Compression, split and other manipulations didn't work. I'll be trying the "Trueimage" exploit but isn't there another easy way to do it?

Thx

[ericshapland@mac.com]

Go to the help menu and check for updates. The new update for parallels comes with a HD file resizer/ virtual disk utility. Works fine.

[ericshapland@mac.com]

Once that's done you should be able to make use of the free space using the Windows Disk Management utility.

[fred 121]

I have done that and didn't find the "HD file resizer / virtual disk utility". My version seems up to date (this is what it says: build 5582 |*3.0 for Mac). Where could I find this utility? In the guest OS or in the Primary OS?

[ericshapland@mac.com]

/Applications/Parallels/Parallels Image Tool. That will set the size of your virtual disk. Once that process has completed, start your virtual machine and in windows go to start then run then type in diskmgmt.msc ant resize your partition to use the extra space you've applied.

[ericshapland@mac.com]

You can also use partition magic to resize the partitions if you have that available to you. It is much easier to use

[fred 121]

Finally did it with the Trueimage thing and it worked fine. Got back 12Gig on my hard drive that I really needed.

Parallels image tool does not help. Thanks for the hints anyway.

[MD4MOMS]

I cannot figure out what is going on here.

I run Windows XP SP3 as guest OS on Parallels 3.0 build 5600 on an iMac 2 GHz Intel Core Duo with 2 GB ram. I, too, ran out of HD space in Windows (damn bloated OS).

I followed the instructions in the Parallels Knowledge Base and managed to install a new HD; drive "E," which Windows recognizes as properly formatted. That does not solve my problem with lack of hdd space on my "C" drive.

Apparently, Parallels 2.X had a hdd expander in Tools I did not know about, and 3.0 does not. Is this correct? We are waiting for a new hard drive expander in some future version? Is this correct?

Has anyone tried Partition Magic or Partition Manager to merge their C and E (or whatever you call it) hard drives into one large drive? Would this be a solution, or do these programs fail to work properly in Parallels? There is mention of both programs in the knowledge base article, but it is rather cryptic.

Perhaps someone from Parallels will jump in here and help me out.

Thank you.

[John@Parallels]

Please check Parallels Desktop for Mac user guide on chapter 13 from http://www.parallels.com/en/download/file/doc/Parallels_Desktop_for_Mac_User_Guide.pdf

Also there is unofficial how-to how to expand Virtual partition C on http://uneasysilence.com/archive/2007/01/9404/

Please not last link provided as is, do not forget to backup VM , before you try