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VHD Resizer

File Details
Downloads: 75638 File Size: 170.7kB
Posted By: davidb Views: 178769
Date Added: 17 Jan 2007

VhdExpand is now VhdResize.

VhdResize will resize Microsoft's VHD 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.

VhdResize requires the Microsoft .Net 2.0 framework available via Windows Update and here.

Installation

Unzip the file to a folder of your choosing and run VhdResize.exe.

If you have problems or questions please visit the Virtual Hard Drive Converters forum.

Release Notes

1.0.42

  • Added a full setup and installation
  • Fixed a problem where the window could not be restored once minimized

1.0.34

  • Changed slider to text field to enter in new Vhd size
  • Added both GB and MB units to the new size value
  • Fixed problem with reading Vhd's from NTFS Compressed folders

1.0.33

  • Fixed error message assocated with a missing vhd.dll

1.0.32 - Initial Release

Comments
 

tkomadowski said:

Davidb, you are a saviour!
2 Feb 2007 8:56 AM
 

phillipjalowiec said:

Great! Allow entry of new disk size from keyboard. Slide is rough - up/down arrow too slow
17 Mar 2007 1:05 PM
 

darinn said:

thank you - this helped me out alot.
18 Apr 2007 3:05 PM
 

Karthik said:

after resizing the vhd, the size of the new vhd still remains the same. can anyone tell why??
25 Apr 2007 5:53 AM
 

jcoombe said:

Still tells me the old size
27 Apr 2007 8:27 AM
 

nieghorn said:

My W2K3 Server environment is also reporting the same size HD after resizing.
3 May 2007 12:38 AM
 

cman123 said:

right click on my computer and go to manage, then disk management. The extra space will appear as unformatted raw space. Depending on your drive setup you may be able to resize in in Disk Management, otherwise you need to use something like partition magic to resize your original partition to use the new space
12 May 2007 10:23 PM
 

ledererc said:

Thats what I looked for! Great job...
15 May 2007 2:44 AM
 

Jim W said:

If you have to use Partition Magic after resizing to a smaller VHD, why not use Partition Magic in the first place and not use VHDResize?
31 May 2007 3:03 PM
 

matanicht said:

I ran VhdResize and now when I try to start up the VM is says "A disk read error occurred Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart". Any clue what happened?
31 May 2007 11:05 PM
 

Arjan said:

Too bad you didn't make it to reduce in size. I know, this is difficult... but not impossible ;-)
4 Jun 2007 10:02 PM
 

Cal Miyatake said:

is there something for VMWare ESX disks?
2 Jul 2007 9:28 AM
 

cody said:

Cal: resizing ESX disks is built into ESX with the "vmkfstools" program.
10 Jul 2007 10:01 AM
 

oripam said:

hello i have a 127gb dynamic vhd and i try to shrink it to 20 GB fix vhd. it seems that the expand/shrink command do not work when i try to shrink it.( it stays gray) only when i set the size larger then 127, the command gets ungray. please help
7 Aug 2007 7:03 AM
 

dedjer said:

NOTE: When doing a fixed resize, ensure that you have enough space on your hard drive for the new image. Otherwise, VHDResizer will complete successfully and you will end up with a 0 byte image file.
9 Aug 2007 10:55 AM
 

solidesnake said:

thanks again. very great tools. thanks vmware,thanks developer.
24 Sep 2007 2:38 AM
 

atwork43 said:

great tool - that´s what most vm-users were looking for! Thanks a lot!
27 Sep 2007 2:26 PM
 

chopsdogg said:

Tools is okay because there is nothing else free out there. However, instead of tacking the extra space on as an extra partiion, why can't I increase the size of an existing partiion.
20 Nov 2007 6:23 AM
 

apocrasoft said:

Cool tool, seems to be working great, thanks!!
24 Nov 2007 5:23 PM
 

rbm@aegis-inc.com said:

VHDResizer - I get a "disk read error" when I try to use the VHD as a boot volume (before and after running DiskPart). Any solution to this? The VHD seems to work fine as a second hard drive.
25 Nov 2007 6:47 AM
 

virtualdev said:

The tool it very limite! I does not allow me to resize below the current size of the vhd. At this point the tool become useless to me.
15 Dec 2007 5:29 PM
 

chrash said:

For Windows Server 2005 this is the cheapest solution to increasing the size of a virutal boot disk. However, to avoid spending $300 for the "Server" version of a partition management utility you can use diskpart. Just attach the bigger C drive as a second volume of a different VM, run diskpart, select the volume, type extend. It quickly uses the full size of the new drive.
4 Jan 2008 2:20 PM
 

velulev said:

Thankyou very much for a useful utility
16 Jan 2008 1:37 PM
 

djhensley said:

kudos to this tool for resizing my 'too small' virtual drive. And biggest KUDOS to chrash - that trick about using diskpart did the job for me. Now if I can get all that hair I pulled out glued back in place.....
23 Jan 2008 11:27 AM
 

ravrav said:

I does not work. I get "A disk read error occurred Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart" error when starting with my resized vhd.
26 Jan 2008 7:11 AM
 

Mariano said:

Problem. An error ocurs. "disk read error", same of ravrav.
28 Jan 2008 9:51 AM
 

lelsomogyi said:

Ran the utility against a 4GB vhd, expanding it to 32 GB, then tried to run the virtual PC, but got the same error as the two individuals above: "A disk error occurred. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart." I did a Compact on the file hoping it would fix it, but it did not. Any ideas on what is happening? I am running Virtual PC 2007 on Vista Ultimate and the vhd is of Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard.
31 Jan 2008 6:46 PM
 

havardoj said:

A brilliant program! One has to use The disk management tool in Computer management to format and partition the new disk.
8 Feb 2008 1:59 AM
 

ydns said:

How to resize (grow) a VHD based Boot Volume 1. Shutdown VHD. 2. Run VHDResizer and grow to needed size. 3. Mount as a drive using VS2005 vhdmount. 4. Run Windows 2003 diskpart. 5. In diskpart console, run commands "list disk", then "Select Disk #", then "Detail Disk", then "Select Volume #",and finally "Extend". 6. unmount using "vhdmount /u all". 7. Rename file if needed and replace old VHD. (Note: Process not original, from a collection of sources)
2 Mar 2008 12:04 PM
 

paulsong said:

Great tool! Thanks a lot.
5 Mar 2008 9:01 PM
 

kenez said:

Doesnt work here. MS Virtual PC 6.0.156 on Vista (32 bit), XP on the virtual machine. Same disk error as above, XP cannot even boot.
22 Mar 2008 9:34 AM
 

zxon said:

Mine won't resize any larger than 4Mb (that's right... Mb, not Gb).
17 Apr 2008 5:20 AM
 

vhdtest said:

This awesome! Save my neck!
30 Apr 2008 2:45 PM
 

Torolf Gulstuen said:

Have a look at this site: http://kb.dutchalps.com/microsoftvirtualpc.htm
19 May 2008 2:20 AM
 

LegacyIT said:

Thank you, this saved me a lot of time Now I understand dynamic is not so dynamic Ydns, your the man.
21 May 2008 1:23 PM
 

billism said:

Such a useful util, I won't even complain about requiring signing up to your web site.
21 May 2008 2:09 PM
 

sachinsrb said:

Fantastic, this works like a charm.
26 May 2008 5:49 AM
 

philbl said:

Using Virtual PC running Windows 2003 server running on XP. The article quoted by Torolf is pure gold. Only extra item I had there was that I had to add a drive letter to the drive before diskpart would recognise that it was dealing with a NTFS partition. Otherwise it works well.
1 Jun 2008 4:53 AM
 

xiaolin said:

Thanks, I hope that you can do better!
3 Jun 2008 7:09 PM
 

tjackrabit said:

Thanks a lot. It's a great tool :)
17 Jun 2008 4:22 AM
 

jeff_martinxp said:

Great tool for expanding my VPCs. Following the steps on Pieter's site http://kb.dutchalps.com/microsoftvirtualpc.htm and you can't go wrong. Great effort on both parts!!! MANY THANKS!!!
1 Jul 2008 11:26 AM
 

Awie said:

This might be quite stupid but if you do not notice it straight away you could be reading a few post befor you relize it. While on the last step of using diskpart i recieved the following message. "the volume you have selected may not be extended". I googled it and found a hot fix for server 2003 but it still didn't work. Until i notised that there was no drive letter assigned, strange but true. After assigning a letter it worked fine and all is well.
11 Jul 2008 2:03 AM
 

czy888 said:

Great tool. Many many thanks. It is a shame that Microsoft does not come out with such kind of simple but effective tools.
25 Jul 2008 7:56 AM
 

noyesar said:

I downloaded the http://www.xtralogic.com/products_vhd_utility.shtml utility. The trial version allows you to expand the vhd by 1 gig. That is all I needed for what I'm trying to do. I ran their utility and then started the virtual pc. I got the same disk read error on boot up. I looked at xtralogic's support page and at the bottom it explained why I was getting this error and how to resolve it. http://www.xtralogic.com/support.shtml#faq_vhdu_disk_read_error I downloaded the TestDisk utitlity and then followed the steps outlined here http://www.xtralogic.com/testdisk_rebuild_bootsector.shtml. This worked!! I'm guessing that the TestDisk utitility will work for those of you that used vhd resizer. When I get time I will try expanding a vhd with vhd resizer and then use the TestDisk utitility to fix it. One other thing is that I followed the following steps http://kb.dutchalps.com/microsoftvirtualpc.htm after running the TestDisk utility. Hopefully this will help others out there that are experiencing this same problem.
25 Jul 2008 8:17 AM
 

breakpoint said:

Problem. An error ocurs. "disk read error" but able to solve by following the instructions here http://www.xtralogic.com/testdisk_rebuild_bootsector.shtml
15 Aug 2008 9:46 PM
 

Robert Stuczynski "Noise" said:

Nice job! Thanks for this tool.
16 Aug 2008 3:43 AM
 

boomhauer said:

great tool. why ms doesnt include it, i cant comprehend.
16 Aug 2008 11:47 AM
 

analfire said:

Thanx noyesar! I was having the "disk error" issue, but TestDisk did the trick, yay!
8 Sep 2008 5:05 AM
 

sjdhoot said:

This is great tool and time saver - resize and then mount with other win 2003 use diskpart to extend.
24 Sep 2008 2:35 PM
 

dvti said:

Excellent tool Thanks a million!
30 Sep 2008 12:54 PM
 

niltonpinheiro said:

Yes...very good tool. Congrats
4 Oct 2008 10:49 AM
 

feliz said:

resized file doesn't work. system shows Alt+Ctrl+Del I wondering is it not compatible to Virtual PC 2007 SP1 ?? sad...
16 Oct 2008 6:59 PM
 

spmbm86 said:

thanks you very much for this
20 Oct 2008 8:26 PM
 

heinzbeinz said:

No prob with Windows Server 2008. Yo can resize the partition with the disk management tool.
23 Oct 2008 4:42 AM
 

wael said:

Thanks man this is a cooooool tool and saved me,, i have tried it on Virtual PC 2007 running on Windows Server 2008 host and all guests are Win2K8 enterprise... the size will be the same but the disk needed to be extended late from the disk management
28 Oct 2008 6:44 AM
 

jaa said:

Simple but lifesaving tool. Makes it more practical to use performance advantage of having fixed size VHDs
29 Oct 2008 9:50 AM
 

cam8001 said:

This worked well, but I need to follow the instructions in the comments: 1. Extend partition using diskpart (thanks ydns) 2. Rebuild boot sector (thanks noyesar): http://www.xtralogic.com/testdisk_rebuild_bootsector.shtml
2 Nov 2008 4:14 PM
 

snowmonster3000 said:

This worked perfectly, the only thing is you need to go into Server Management / Storage / Disk Manager and expand the C volume to include the new space.
29 Jan 2009 12:31 PM
 

onlyamd said:

Fantastic tool, easy, fast and useful. Thanks man!!!
3 Feb 2009 2:31 PM
 

cge@d-fi.fr said:

Worked fine for vhds hosting w2k8, Thanks.
7 Feb 2009 6:09 PM
 

Jomit said:

Excellent tool, it saved a lot of my time, Thanks 'ydns' for your diskpart commands as well, Cheers, Jomit
16 Mar 2009 12:54 AM
 

TsetsE said:

Great tool and great comments as well. As it is been said before: the comment from Torolf Gulstuen is pure gold. Have a look at the website there and has everything you need. thanks a lot to all of you.
27 Mar 2009 2:41 AM
 

rj022 said:

how do i get this program to run i have downlaod it and nothin occurs ( video digital singnature)
1 Apr 2009 6:51 AM
 

Jsherman20 said:

Worked great - exactly as documented. Thank you very much.
5 Apr 2009 9:28 AM
 

amit266 said:

Hi, How can I incrase the size of the linked HDDs? Any ways to do that?
6 Apr 2009 5:43 AM
 

Jaca said:

Works great (with a little help from TestDisk), thanks.
7 Apr 2009 11:19 AM
 

ginocul said:

is installation really needed ?
22 Apr 2009 1:26 PM
 

brigittas said:

I have built a Windows Server 2008 VPC and I wanted to resize it from 16 GB. I tried the VHDResizer and got a new VHD and used the Diskpart as mentioned in one of the comments above. But I am not able to boot the VPC from new VHD. I get this error "selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt" . Looked around on the net but couldn't find a solution to it. Tried TestDisk . It says that everything is ok. But I see some guys mentioned above that they got this to work with Windows 2008. I wonder where I am going wrong?
28 Apr 2009 6:18 AM
 

fordelit1 said:

I had a similar issue as brigittas mentions above .. But my virtual PC was vista on a XP host .. Anyway, i used the vista bootable DVD to repair the installation. At the start itself, it gave a message something like "there seems to be some problem with the startup .. do you want to correct it?" .. i said .. it did a reboot and i did not allow it to boot from the DVD, but let it use the new extended HDD .. and it worked !!
14 May 2009 7:13 PM
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