Instructions to increase the virtual hard drive capacity on Virtualbox

TipsMake.com - When you first create a virtual machine in Virtualbox, the program will always prompt the user to create a new virtual drive for the virtual machine. Now most people decide to use the default 20GB storage space themselves. However, if you are a regular user of the virtual machine, soon the virtual memory will be filled. At this point, the only way is to increase the storage space for the virtual drive. The article will guide readers to do this.

On a real computer (host) running Linux or Windows, open a command prompt and enter the following command:

VBoxManage modifyhd /path/to/vdi-file --resize x

Replace ' x ' in the command line with new virtual hard drive capacity. For example, if you want to increase the size to 30GB, the command will be:

VBoxManage modifyhd windows7.vdi --resize 30000

Hit Enter. A progress bar appears, indicating the process of resizing the hard drive. When it reaches 100%, the resizing process is complete.

The next step is to access the corresponding OS on the virtual machine to identify the increase in storage space.

Increase virtual hard disk space on Windows virtual machines

Steps to expand drive size in VirtualBox

You can expand the VirtualBox drive size from the Virtual Media Manager tool. Here are the steps to do this in Windows.

1. Open VirtualBox.

2. Click File and select the Virtual Media Manager option .

Click File and select the Virtual Media Manager option

3. Select the virtual drive (VDI) you want to expand.

Select the virtual drive (VDI) you want to expand

4. Use the slider beside Size to change the size or expand the drive. You can also enter exact dimensions in GB in the field next to the slider.

Use the slider beside Size to change the size or expand the drive

5. Click Apply.

6. Close Virtual Media Manager .

As soon as you apply the changes, the VirtualBox drive will be resized according to the settings. For example, in the example case, the drive was resized from 35GB to 45GB.

Remember that newly expanded space will be displayed as unallocated space in the guest operating system. You need to manually partition this unallocated disk space in the virtual operating system. You can use the Disk Management tool in Windows to create, expand, or change the volume of partitions.

Command to change the size of a VirtualBox disk

You can use the VBoxManage command to change the size of the VirtualBox disk space. Here is how to do it.

1. Open Start.

2. Type CMD and press Enter.

3. Enter cd "C:Program FilesOracleVirtualBox"in the command window and press Enter.

4. Now, execute the command below. Replace "" with the actual full path of the VDI file, along with its extension and "" with the new drive capacity in MegaBytes (MB).

VBoxManage modifyhd "" --resize 

5. For example, the command will look like this once you replace the assumed values.

VBoxManage modifyhd "C:UsersWindowsLoopVirtualBox VMsWindows 10Windows 10.vdi" --resize 46080

6. Close the Command Prompt window.

It's easy to use the VBoxMange command to change the size of the VirtualBox disk!

Increase virtual hard disk capacity on Linux virtual machines

Depending on the hard drive setup, expanding the active partition may be difficult or easy. If you just want to add more storage space to hold the file, an easier way is to format a newly created and accessed space as an external part of Ubuntu.

Turn on the Linux VM. Install Partition Editor application.

sudo apt-get install gparted

Run GParted. The user will see an unallocated partition. Right-click on this partition and select New .

For the file system, choose FAT32 because it is well supported by both Linux and Windows. You can also choose ext2 / 3/4. Click OK .

Click the Tick button at the top of the screen to apply changes.

Once completed, we can open the file manager and extract the newly created partition.

Those are all steps to take. You can now use this external partition to store your desired data. Good luck!