Expanding the size of the virtual disk in Workstation fails with the error: There is not enough space on the file system for the selected operation

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Cannot expand the size of the virtual disk in VMware Workstation
• Attempting to expand the virtual hard disk space by navigating to VM > Settings > Hard Disk fails
• You see the error:
  
  There is not enough space on the file system for the selected operation
   
• The issue occurs even if there is sufficient free space on the hard drive

Environment

VMware Workstation 10.x (Windows)
VMware Player 5.x (Windows)
VMware Workstation Player 15.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation Pro 15.x (Linux)
VMware Player 4.x (Windows)
VMware Player Pro 7.x (Linux)
VMware Player 5.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation Pro 15.x (Windows)
VMware Workstation 7.x (Windows)
VMware Player 4.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation Player 14.x (Windows)
VMware Workstation 9.x (Windows)
VMware Player 3.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation 7.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation 11.x (for Windows)
VMware Workstation 8.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation Player 15.x (Windows)
VMware Player 7.x (Windows)
VMware Workstation 8.x (Windows)
VMware Player 6.x (Windows)
VMware Player 3.x (Windows )
VMware Player 7.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation 9.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation 11.x (for Linux)
VMware Workstation Player 14.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation 10.x (Linux)
VMware Player 6.x (Linux)
VMware Player Pro 7.x (Windows)

Cause

This issue occurs if working space required to expand the disk is insufficient. The working space required for the disk expansion is the current size of the virtual disk.

 

Note: To view the current size of the virtual disk, go to VM > Settings > Hard Disk.

 

For monolithic disks, if the current size of the virtual disk is 50GB, you require an additional 50GB as working space to expand the disk size.

 

If you are using a split disk of 2GB, you require much lesser space because you only need to create additional 2GB split disk segments.

 

Note: This requirement also applies to disk expansion while using vmware-vdisk-manager.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, ensure that you have sufficient free space on the hard disk that is used to store the virtual machine. For more information, see Investigating operating system disk space (1004007).

 

You can also move the virtual machine to an external storage with adequate storage and then perform the disk expansion. The virtual machine can be then moved back to the original location after expanding the virtual disk size. For more information, see How to copy a Workstation virtual machine from one location to another (2030609).

Additional Information

For related information, see:

Locating a hosted virtual machine's files (1003880)

Locating a hosted virtual machine's files (1003880)

Investigating operating system disk space (1004007)

How to copy Workstation virtual machine from one location to another (2030609)