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Autoexpanding harddrive

Apr 30, 2006, 04:36 AM
#1  

robertcerny
Junior Member


Join: Apr 2006
Posts: 9
Autoexpanding harddrive
Hi folks,
when I installed Parallels WM Beta 1, I choose 4GB expanding harddrive. Now I'm using beta6 and the drive is almost full. I used the new image tool to make it bigger - 6.5GB but WinXP still display it as 3.99GB. What am I missing?

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Robert Cerny
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Apr 30, 2006, 04:41 AM
#2  

DotNetGuy
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Posts: 34
You've expanded the "physical" hard drive, but that doesn't necessarily change XP's view of the world. I would expect inside the VM you'd need something like Partition Magic to resize the partition.
Apr 30, 2006, 09:15 AM
#3  

vamp07
Member


Join: Apr 2006
Posts: 86
This would be good to know. If we hit the size limit we hit when setting up we can expand farther by using something like PM? I would think PM will see the disk as the size we set when setting up. I'll try Pm latter if I get a chance.
Apr 30, 2006, 12:02 PM
#4  

RussGJohnson
Junior Member


Join: Apr 2006
Posts: 11
What I did was to download a free Linux rescue disk that has a full suite of tools, including a partition magic clone. Google this file: "systemrescuecd-x86-0.2.18.iso" and download it. I then attached the .iso image to the Parallels virtual pc CD Rom drive and changed the boot order to CdRom first. Be sure to select " connect on startup". When you restart the pc, it should boot to the rescue disk. Launch the partition program and resize your partition.

This worked like a charm for me, as now windows can see my new, larger partition.
Apr 30, 2006, 12:13 PM
#5  

gary
Junior Member


Join: Apr 2006
Posts: 27
A really really nice addition to would be real resizing with Parallels, making the image and partition bigger or smaller.

There was a time when I installed XP, all the updates, cleaned it up, and then cloned it to a less than 1 gig partition to save space.

If Parallels could at least expand the image and partition size without a tool like Partition Magic and it could shrink images of unused space, maybe that'd be good enough. It would be great.
Apr 30, 2006, 03:04 PM
#6  

engrProf
Member


Join: Apr 2006
Posts: 34
Thanks RussGJohnson: Now I have free space!
Quote:
Originally Posted by RussGJohnson
What I did was to download a free Linux rescue disk that has a full suite of tools, including a partition magic clone. Google this file: "systemrescuecd-x86-0.2.18.iso" and download it. I then attached the .iso image to the Parallels virtual pc CD Rom drive and changed the boot order to CdRom first. Be sure to select " connect on startup". When you restart the pc, it should boot to the rescue disk. Launch the partition program and resize your partition.

This worked like a charm for me, as now windows can see my new, larger partition.
It worked wonderfully for me, too!

0. MAKE A COPY OF YOUR HARD DRIVE IMAGE BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING!!! Run Parallels Image Tool to expand the maximum size of your hard drive image. Windows won't see any more space. You still need to repartition.
1. Go to http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page
2. I recommend you read the FAQ page. Download the .iso image (the right one to download is the link that says x86)
3. Open Parallels and click on CD/DVD-ROM. Select "Use image file" radio button. Click on the [...] button and browse to navigate to the place where you downloaded the .iso file. Select it and click "open." Make sure "Enabled" and "Connect at startup" are selected.
4. Click "OK" and you are back to the console view.
5. Click on "Boot sequence" and check "CD-ROM, Hard Disk, Floppy."
6. Start the VM. You'll see a System Rescue welcome screen, and it will tell you to press "Enter" to boot. Press "Enter." It will boot into Linux. There are some choices you'll be asked to make. I just accepted all the defaults.
7. When it is done booting, it will give you a root@sysresccd /root %" prompt. Type run_qtparted at the prompt. (The instructions further up the the screen tell you to do this if you want to run the Partition Magic clone)
8. After one more default to accept, a nice GUI interface comes up. You should see your hard drive image in the left-hand window. Click on it. It will show you the partitions on your hard drive in the right-hand window. There should be a little Windows icon next to your startup partition. Under the "operations" menu click "resize" and use the arrows or type numbers to resize your startup partition. Click "OK."
9. Now under the "device" menu click "commit." This will resize your partition.
10. Quit and power off your machine. Go back to the CD-DVD-ROM options screen and de-enable at startup, and you may as well de-select the .iso file image.
11. Start your VM and it will boot into Windows. You will have a resized partition and plenty of free space! As a note, after I did this, Windows knew I had done something funny, because it ran chkdsk. I let it run and everything checked out OK. It started up fine and I now have lots of free space, and better yet, a way to give myself even more free space if I need it.
12. Be a nice person and click on "Make a Donation" on the System Resuce website. Partition Magic costs $18.99. You just saved yourself $18.99. So give them something less than that just to say thanks.

THANK YOU, RussGJohnson!!
Apr 30, 2006, 05:19 PM
#7  

RussGJohnson
Junior Member


Join: Apr 2006
Posts: 11
Your welcome. Nice job on documenting all of the details of the process!!!
Jun 10, 2006, 04:33 PM
#8  

johnb
Member


Join: Jun 2006
Posts: 33
the instructions are clear. but i have a question. when i chooose a partition to resize, the resize option in the operations menu is dimmed. is there anything i need to do to activate it?
Jun 12, 2006, 09:10 AM
#9  

sassoon
Member


Join: May 2006
Posts: 52
Quote:
Originally Posted by RussGJohnson
What I did was to download a free Linux rescue disk that has a full suite of tools, including a partition magic clone. Google this file: "systemrescuecd-x86-0.2.18.iso" and download it. I then attached the .iso image to the Parallels virtual pc CD Rom drive and changed the boot order to CdRom first. Be sure to select " connect on startup". When you restart the pc, it should boot to the rescue disk. Launch the partition program and resize your partition.

This worked like a charm for me, as now windows can see my new, larger partition.
Russ or anyone:

I know this is not parallels related, but can any of you point me to a good partition utiulity for OSX? I ahd to kill my boot camp partition since it was not big enough and cannot recreate it since I get the stupid error some files cannot be moved. I know what the issue is, and really do not want to image my system, wipe it out and start over.

I know that diskwarrior could have taken care of this problem, but they do not have an intel based solutiuon yet.

Could this systemrescue CD do what I need?

Thanks in advance.

Mike V.

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Mike Vidal
Apr 30, 2006, 02:18 PM
#10  

gardel
Junior Member


Join: Apr 2006
Posts: 5
Quote:
Originally Posted by DotNetGuy
I would expect inside the VM you'd need something like Partition Magic to resize the partition.
I can confirm that Partition Magic does allow you to resize the Windows partition in this scenario. I increased the size of a 4 GB image created with Parallels Beta 1 to 20 GB using image tools in Beta 6. I then used Partition Magic inside XP to increase the partition to use all 20 GBs. Not even a restart of windows was necessary.
Jun 13, 2006, 02:16 AM
#11  

veggiedude
Member


Join: Apr 2006
Posts: 98
I can't recommend auto-expanding drives. When I converted mine back to being a static drive, XP now boots up to 300 times faster, and things are just snappier and seems a lot faster now.
 


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