Unable to expand the disk size of Imported Bootcamp

Using PD 12 for Mac, I imported the bootcamp partition with Windows10 and the Imported Vcamp works fine. However it is very tight for disk space (I cannot run Windows update because not enough space) but I am unable to increase its size. In Control Centre/Settings/General the Total Size is shown as 30.4Gb, while in Control Centre/Settings/Hardware expanding disk is listed as 234 Gb (which is the size of the Mac harddrive). How can I increase the 30.4 Gb? Thanks

 

Sorry, am I asking a dumb question here? Lots of looks but no replies.

 

Hello @DannyB2 Parallels Support Here! We would request you to refer to this article http://kb.parallels.com/123372 and check if it helps. Thanks, Shathish

 

Hi Shathish, thanks for the reply. I referred to the article above but have some concerns. Please see the PDF file I have attached. Thanks, Danny

 

Hello?

 

The value you see under General is the size of the virtual machine file (it is a file with the extension '.pvm'). This is different from the the disk space value allocated to Windows under Hardware -> Hard Disk 1, which is only an upper limit - not an actual, tangible disk space amount - to which Windows will gradually occupy more and more disk space on your Mac. Your concern should be with regards to the remaining free space in Windows: Press CMD+E in Windows to open the Windows Explorer. In the left panel, click on 'This PC' and look for the C: drive in the main panel. What is the remaining disk space within the C: drive?

 

Hello DannyB2,, I'm afraid parallels setup won't help you much.
In theory at first you should re-partition your hard drive from the OS X.
Most likely you need to shrink OS X partitions.
Bootcamp Assistant notices that once partition created it cannot be adjusted.
So you can do it from Disk Utility.
After you modified your hard disk you must boot into native bootcamp to ensure that some unused disk space available for Windows.
If there will be an unused space you can try to add additional partitions or expand windows one. It depends from actual partition layout. And this should be done by windows tools while booted into native Bootcamp.
After these two stages done (and windows boots fine with modified setup) you need to go back to OS X and recreate Bootcamp VM.
In this case during VM configuration stage a new disk layout will be taken into account by Parallels Desktop.
All these actions are too dangerous if you are not familiar with hard disk partitioning and Disk Utility.
In case of wrong actions at a first stage you can destroy all OS X data and system,
while mistake at the second stage leads to destroy windows and its data.

 

Thanks Hemnath, the C:drive values are 29.8Gb used and 919Mb free (capacity 30.7Gb). How can I increase this 30.7Gb? This VM was imported from Bootcamp so that I could access more disk space, which is what I'd like to do. Regards, Danny

 

Thanks Mmika, the VM I have has been imported from Bootcamp so it is on the main OS X partition, not still confined to the Bootcamp partition. I imported it to the main OS X partition as I understood it was then possible to increase the diskspace accessible to Windows VM. Regards, Danny

 

Please try allocating more disk space for Windows.

 

Unfortunately when I go to Control Centre/Settings/Hardware/Hard disk 1 it has 234Gb as the size of the expanding disk and when I select Edit I just see much larger disk sizes (see below). My disk is a 250Gb disk so I don't see where I can change any settings here to help me.


Regards, Danny

 

Well. In this case you could try to use prl_disk_too utility.
See http://kb.parallels.com/118415 for example.
You may run a command in OS X terminal similar to (please provide an actual path to VM hdd image file):
prl_disk_tool resize --hdd ~/Documents/Parallels/Imported VCamp.pvm/vm.hdd --size 64G --resize_partition
But please shutdown windows properly before resizing its partition, i.e.
run in windows VM command 'shutdown /s -t 0'. You can do this ether from windows command prompt or in a window after pressing (Command or WIN)+R key for example.
This will shutdown windows VM clearly. A simple action from a Parallels menu "Actions->Shut down" will cause windows hibernation in case of Parallels Tools installed.

Update: I think I understood the issue. Please provide a screen shot of a Windows Disk manager with disk layout inside imported VM. How is original OS X partition marked there?
Actually you may need to increase virtual VM hard disk size even it would be larger then you physical hard drive.
This is required to expand a partition with windows data inside guest OS. Another way it to make an additional partition that resides before the windows one. In short because bootcamp partition placed in the end of virtual disk there is no room to increase it until you increase your virtual disk.
Another way is to move bootcamp partition to the beginning of a virtual disk, but this can be done by some third party tools. You will need to boot the VM from that third party bootable cd image and repartition/move data using that tools.

 

Here is a screenshot of the Windows Disk Manager:


Regards, Danny

 

I see. So you can create additional partition for windows data in this 203.02 GB of unallocated space.
If you wish to expand disk C, you need to increase virtual disk size and this was offered by Parallels.
Don't worry, currently this 203.02 GB of unallocated space currently doesn't waste your OSX disk.
In common partitions can be expanded or truncated, i.e. its start address cannot be changed.
The more complex way is to move whole disk C to the first 201MB of virtual disk. But it is too dangerous.
This can be done by third party utils.

 

I did a full laptop backup and then tried one step at a time. It appears that the answer was to ignore the 234 Gb shown in Control Centre/Settings/Hardware/Hard disk 1 and just Edit the size to 272 Gb (even thought the physical size of the disk is 250 Gb) and now the VM Disk Management shows the C:bootcamp drive as 69 Gig (38 Gig more than I started with) and OS X is still happy.

Thanks for your assistance.

 

This worked for me, too; thanks very much.
It must be a common problem. I wonder whether Parallels might include it in their help?