Extending a virtual disk only extends a virtual machine's disk. This does not automatically increase the size of the file system (such as NTFS for Windows and ext3 for Linux) within the guest. For more information on how to extend the virtual disk, see the documentation for your VMware product.
This article describes increasing the size of a disk partition. The virtual disk may have unallocated space that you now want to use. You may also have increased the size of a virtual machine's virtual disk but are unable to see the new space from the virtual machine's operating system.
You can expand the size of the VMDK disk while the virtual machine is online. However, you must reboot the guest operating system (OS) in the virtual machine so that it is aware of the size change of the VMDK disk.
Also, ensure that the virtual machine is not running on snapshots, as this prevents the VMDK from being extended.
To verify if the virtual machine is running on snapshot disks:
Right-click the virtual machine and click Edit Settings.
Select the Virtual Disk and check the Disk File. If it is labeled as VM-000001.vmdk, the virtual machine is running on snapshot disks.
Depending on the guest OS in the virtual machine, there are several methods available to increase the file system within the virtual machine.
If you have another Windows virtual machine with the same version of the operating system, you could temporarily attach the operating system VMDK to this virtual machine (known as a helper VM) and extend the file system on the VMDK from this virtual machine using the Windows DiskPart tool.
If the VMDK disk you need to extend does not contain the operating system disk then you can use DiskPart in the original virtual machine without the need for a helper VM.
For more information on extending a VMDK disk using DiskPart, see the microsoft documentation: Extend a data volume in Windows
If the Linux virtual machine has an ext4 or xfs file system under the control of Logical Volume Manager (LVM) control then there are LVM tools to allow the file system to be extended.
For more information on extending an ext4 or xfs file system with LVM, see RedHat's documentation: Growing a File System on a Logical Volume.
If you are running a file system that is not uner the control of the LVM, you may need to research an alternative way of accomplishing this. Reiser has its own tool for accomplishing this, GParted Live CD is another popular tool for this.
Name | Link to the Tool |
DFSee | http://www.dfsee.com/dfsee/index.php |
EASEUS Partition Manager | http://www.partition-tool.com/ |
GParted LiveCD | http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php |
Partition Logic | http://partitionlogic.org.uk/ |
Paragon Partition Manager | http://www.partition-manager.com/ |
System Rescue CD | http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page |
Windows DiskPart utility | If you are using the Windows DiskPart utility, it can only extend (expand) data volumes. If you use the DiskPart utility to extend a system or boot volume, you may get an error. For more information about extending partitions with the DiskPart utility. |
Notes:
VMware command line utilities used to resize virtual disks do not touch the data or partitions inside the virtual disks. Any desired partition changes must be made from the virtual machine's operating system.
For more information, see Adding space to an ESX host virtual disk (994).
Growing a File System on a Logical Volume