How to extend drive?

Extending NTFS partitions, my experience

Your mileage may vary.

My experience is with Windows 2000 Pro, Windows XP Pro, Windows NT 4.0. In general, I don't run the Server versions of Windows in a VM, so your mileage may vary.

I have found a very reliable method that works great for me but, involves a third party tool (software) I will explain in a minute.

Couple of important points, if you're VM has only a single drive, then my method is the only acceptable solution (meaning reliable solution) to date. There are many recommendations out there about Linux boot disk, utilities release by MS and so forth, I repeat non are reliable.

Now to explain my method.
1) extend the Virtual Hard Disk per Parallels tools as you have already found.

2) Acquire and install third party Partition software, in my case, Partition Magic 8.0

3) After, booting the VM and logging in with an Administrator account, use Partition magic to expand the disk to full size, takes a couple of minutes and it done. That's it no hassels, no fuss.

See, the problem, is MS tools will not adjust the size of the NTFS partition if it is the boot partition, and in most VM cases it is always the boot partition. There are some ways around this, but they are complex and require considerable knowledge of the Windows/NTFS boot/partition technology.

Lastly, the MS tools are intended for the latest version of NTFS and can break 2K or 4.0 Windows environments.

I hope this helpful.
 
I did it with the new 3150 RC2 with Vista don't know if it will work with XP BUT I didi not have to copy. I just use TOOLS to extend to the amount of space I need then open VM and go to CMD tyhen just follow the instructions after that make sure you check which volume you are extending. It is soo cool now. No more copy and bring back just extend it. Hope this helps


1
Copy the HDD drive image file and rename
2
Use Image Tools to resize the original HDD file
3
Change your VM profile to boot off of the copied HDD image and add the original, resized image as a second hard disk
4
Once booted, open CMD prompt and run DISKPART
View volumes in DISKPART with the command list volume. Note which volume is your original, resized partition
Select that partition using the DISKPART command select volume # where # is the partition number.
Enter the command extend
Enter the command exit

Exit Windows and change the VM profile to once again boot from the original, resized image file. You can disconnect (and delete?) the copied image file from the VM profile.

I don't know if DISKPART can be used on Windows XP, etc. but I know that you can download it from Microsoft. Google diskpart windows download.

As mentioned, this worked for me though I cannot guarantee that this will work in all situations.
 
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