The boys from vmToolkit are back! The VHD Expander is now VHD Resizer. More info in their post " VHD

In keeping with your blogs/teams desire to maintain a balanced perspective, will you be making the Convertion tool work both ways and also making a resizer for vmdk's as well?

Those guys over at vmToolkit have released a new tool. This one allows you to resize and convert existing

I just saw over at the Virtual PC Guy’s Blog that a new tool is available that allows you resize existing...

I am sitting in Building 34 on the Redmond campus attending some security sessions during the MVP Summit.

It doesn't work with .net 2.0 SP1 (2.0.6129). I had to revert to just plain .net 2.0. It would be nice if it supported both...

I'm really interested in seeing the future posts on shrinking vhds!

Thanks guys!

After using VHDResizer, I couldn't boot the VHD (made with VPC2007) anymore :(

I'm glad I didn't overwrite the original VHD.

Sorry, but no VHDResizer for me. A newer version I will try ...

We released a new update to the resizer.

Version 1.0.34, we made some minor UI changes and fixed an NTFS compressed disk error. The downloads page has more information.

Learnings from Creating a Developer Virtual PC Image

Mucho thanks.  Tool works fabulously!

I am not able to generate booting resized disk (made with VPC2007) using VhdResizer 1.0.34.0 under Vista. :<

Does this actually resize the file on the fly or does it resize it temporarily in another TEMP location and when finish just replaces the new resized file?  I ask because I am out of space on my drive with the VHD and if it tries to temporarily store the newly resized drive while resizing then it will fail!  My VHD is 80 GB and the physical drive it is on is 100 GB.

I used the tool on w2k3x64 and it worked great.  You may want to mention that users will still have to expand the partition of the new VHD.  I used VHDmount and diskpart with great success.

Thx a lot for your tool ;-p

I used it in Vista 32-bit to create a new VHD file from an existing one.  It would not overwrite the original or overwrite another VHD, but creating a new file it worked fine.  Then I had to use VHDMount (free and part of Virtual Server) to get it in Vista so I could extend the VHD partition to utilize the rest of the VHD after resize.  I associated this VHD back to my VPC image and I was good to go!

Worked great!  Thanks!  I also had to use VHDmount and diskpart.  Good stuff.

Using VHDResize v1.0.42, I've only had success with INCREASING a vhd file, not decreasing.  This makes sense, as you can't very well truncate part of a vhd file unless you know what you're truncating (which I believe is what happens with Virtual Server's compactor tool).

There's a second issue I found with this tool.  When wanting to convert from a dynamic to fixed vhd file, the fixed vhd file would end up several GB larger than the dynamic.  For example SIZE(dynamic.vhd) = 12.8gb, SIZE(fixed.vhd) = 16.7gb.  Why is that?

All in all, I've found it useful for resizing fixed vhd files.  Fixed vhd files yield better performance than their dynamic vhd counterparts.

אז התקדמתם, יש לכם כבר עשרות מכונות וירטואליות, שרצות על Virtual Server כמובן (אני לא יורק לבאר :) )

What a great tool! So simple and so easy.

IT World.com shares the following 5 ways to expand a virtual hard drive. 1. Follow Benjamin Guinebertière's blog post concerning how he managed to do this. Gotta love robocopy!

i think this is working.great job!

Ran across this tool today. Just used it and it works - coolies. Thanks vmtookit.com Technorati Tags:...

Still VHD Expander, not Resizer ... Great tool to expand .VHD ... but what if I need to reduce/optimize .VHD size ? Not possible with this soft.

WOW

cool tool

This is a great tool. Works perfectly! This really got me out of a jam and I am very greatful. I would recommend this to anyone with space issues with their virtual servers (VHD's).

Cheers,

]R[ SincLabs

Quote: The tool will now check the partitions within the VHD and provide you with sizing options (displayed as a slider) which start at the end of your partition and go up to 127 GB.

But, 1.0.42.0 provides only a "New Size" option, and no sliders are available to work on the partitions within the VHD!  That would have  been the icing on the cake!

Fantastic tool. Many thanks!

Once the Resizer is run, the file size remains the same. How do we increase the size once this tools is executed?

Thanks

Hi JR,

Could you uwalk us through how u used the vhdmount and diskpart tools?

Thanks

"Once the Resizer is run, the file size remains the same"

same here....

My destination VHD was set to 20GB size, but after the Resizer finished, it is still 16GB. What am I doing wrong ?

I realy need it to be bigger now. Please help.

Thanks

Resizer did not resize.

Windows XP SP3, .NET up to 3.5;

source vhd 16GB and new destination vhd set to 40GB; process seemed to run ok but new vhd size remained at 16GB

Worked a charm for me......!!!!!!

Cheers....... :~)

Hi    sHEdON .......... after you run the resizer, u can find the that the unalocated space has increased.

use Acronis Disk Director Server and create a partition out of that unalocated space and then increase the free space of the drive that you want by taking space from the newly created drive............

hope this might solve your issue.

My guest OS is Win 2008 Server Enterprise. After the vhdresize, I was able to allocate all the extra space to the boot sector by using the graphical disk manager (start->rt. click Computer->Manage->Storage->Disk Management).

In fact the process of mounting the resized drive as disk2 and extending the boot sector caused my guest OS to fail to load. The testdisk utility referenced above reported the disk as consistent.

Guys, can't I downsize?

I found all the steps on the site but see some are posting that they're vhd isn't resized so I thought I'd reiterate the steps:

Preconditions:

A) Both .vhd files are NOT in a saved state. Shut them down.

B) Download DiskPart from MicroSoft.

Instructions:

1) Create your larger .vhd file from your SOURCE .vhd file.

2) With MS VPC, open Settings using your SOURCE .vhd.

3) In MS VPC > Settings > Setup "Hard Disk 2" > Select your LARGER .vhd

4) Start the vpc (for the SOURCE .vhd)

5) Install DiskPart on the running SOURCE .vhd

6) From RUN / cmd line, run diskpart.exe

7) In DiskPart: type "list" > enter, then "list volume" enter

8) in DiskPart: Type "select volume 1" > enter   - volume 1 (the LARGER vhd is selected)

9) In DiskPart: Type "extend" > "size = (n)" > enter.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766465.aspx has all the commands for DiskPart in case I gave incorrect information. I was able to figure this out in a short time and now my old vhd is 127 gigs!

9)

With the vhd shut down, open MS VPC.

File > Virtual Disk Wizard > Next > Edit an existing virtual disk

Browse and select your vhd > Next

Select to Compact it OR Convert to a fixed size

etc...

I tried this tool to shrink my vhd file.....it does not do this??

this tool is very useful for my work,thank you admin.

It doesn't work with .net 2.0 SP1 here either. It would be nice if it supported both

I'm really interested in seeing the future posts

Doesn't shrink anything for me either. I do not even get a slider....? I have the latest version....Is this a scam or is there a slider?

With the knowledge that VM's can expand dramatically during use, I intentionally created new VM's for Windows7 with a small sized Hard Drive. However I quickly ran out of room. Searching the internet I came across your vhr resizer tool and was surprised how easy and effectively this was to increase the size of the hard disk.

Not being aware of the Microsoft offering I used the freeware product EaseUs-PartitionManager to resize the disk internally once the new, larger VM was created.

Excellent product. I have Vista operating system and no problems in using your product in this environment. (I did not find the slider either - but it works and that is what is important).

With the knowledge that VM's can expand dramatically during use, I intentionally created new VM's for Windows7 with a small sized Hard Drive. However I quickly ran out of room. Searching the internet I came across your vhr resizer tool and was surprised how easy and effectively this was to increase the size of the hard disk.

Not being aware of the Microsoft offering I used the freeware product EaseUs-PartitionManager to resize the disk internally once the new, larger VM was created.

Excellent product. I have Vista operating system and no problems in using your product in this environment. (I did not find the slider either - but it works and that is what is important).

Great tool. Just for info: Should DISKPART not work on Server 2003 because of the second HD being a system one, just disable the device and re-enable it - then it should work fine - at least it did with my Virtual disk

This is an odd question - but  does this application support scsi attached VHD's (i have one i need to expand >127gb) where the limit is 2TB

There is a product available that will resize VHD, even when they have data in them without causing corruption or preventing the VHD from used as a native boot VHD.

This product is called Portlock Leap Frog.

I need to reduce my vhd from 45 GB to 20 GB. But VHD Resizer doesnt allow to reduce size below 45GB. Is there any other way to do this? :-(