Virtual PC 2007 VHD: Resize NTFS Windows System Partition

2008-05-05 by Administrator, tagged as microsoft, software

As you may have recognized reading my last post I sometimes use my blog as a Personal Knowledge Management System (PKMS). This post is filed under the same category.

Virtual PC 2007 is a free virtualization product from Microsoft. You can download many M$ Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) files from here

  1. Go to http://vmtoolkit.com and download the VHD Resizer (btw they also have a tool to convert VMware VMDK images to VHD files)
  2. Run the tool and open the VHD file you want to resize (make sure its not currently used by a running VM)
  3. Specify a new VHD file as destination with a type (fixed/dynamic) and a size and click on the button “Resize” (this may take a while so go and get a drink)
    VHDresizer
  4. Add the new resized harddisk image to your virtual machine as second/third HD and boot into it with the original small VHD as system disk.
    Disk Managment wo Letter
  5. VERY IMPORTANT: Use “Computer Management” -> “Disk Management” to
    assign a drive letter to the second/third HD
    (otherwise dispart will not work)
    Add Letter to HD
  6. Now open a CMD console and type diskpart to get into the interactive mode of the partition utlitiy. The tool is part of Windows XP / 2003 and later and may be downloaded for Win 2000
  7. type list volume to display the list of available volumes in your system
  8. type select [volume ID] (where [volume ID] either is the drive letter or the number given by the list volume command
  9. type extend
    Diskpart
  10. Shutdown the system
  11. Use the extended HD as your primary VHD file in your virtual machine configuration and remove the original (small) VHD file from your setup
  12. Boot the virtual machine and download lots of movies in HD quality to fill up the new space