Here is another tool for the toolkit. This is for those of you who use Microsoft's virtualization tools. We believe you can achieve better performance using a fixed disk size rather than a dynamic disk size in Virtual Server and Virtual PC. The trouble comes when you need your fixed disk to be bigger. This is one solution.
VhdExpand will expand Microsoft's VHD format files and will also convert between Fixed and Dynamic file types. This is a sector by sector copy operation from one size/type to the other and the source file remains unaltered. VhdExpand requires the Microsoft .Net 2.0 framework available via Windows Update.
To use the tool:
- Run the .exe
- Browse to the image file you want to expand
- Select a name and destination for your new image
- Set the size you want to expand to and the type (Fixed or Dynamic)
- Hit expand, all this process does is expand the size of the virtual drive but not any partions within
- Once expanded if you previously had a partition you will need to use "diskpart" for NTFS systems or "fdisk" in linux to expand the partition to recognize the new size.
Note: When expanding to a fixed disk type the tool must allocate the disk space prior to expanding. There is no visual indicator during this process, the "expand" button will be unavailable and the progress bar will start once the tool begins to expand the image.