How to resize a VirtualBox vmdk file

VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature-rich, high-performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software.

VMDK (Virtual Machine Disk) is a file format that describes containers for virtual hard disk drives to be used in virtual machines like VMware Workstation or Oracle VirtualBox.

In the earlier post, we have looked at how to install Ubuntu on Oracle VirtualBox.There could be scenarios wherein you would run out of space on Virtualbox and need to resize the virtual image, the following steps would help you to resize the VMDK file.

1. Add “VirtualBox Installation location” to the Path variable
2. We are going to use VBoxManage command-line interface to resize the disk. With VBoxManage, you can completely control VirtualBox from the command line of your host operating system. VBoxManage supports all the features that the graphical user interface gives you access to, but it supports a lot more than that.

3. For resizing the disk, first, convert the vmdk file to vdi format using the following command VBoxManage clonehd "ubuntu1864.vmdk" "cloned.vdi" --format vdiHere ubuntu1864.vmdk is the file that we are going to resize & cloned.vdi is intermediate file in vdi format.

4. Then resize the vdi file to the required size using the following command VBoxManage modifyhd "cloned.vdi" --resize 51200 Here cloned.vdi is an intermediate file in vdi format.

5. Next step is to convert the vdi file back to vmdk file using the following command VBoxManage clonehd "cloned.vdi" "ubuntu18641.vmdk" --format vmdkHere ubuntu18641.vmdk is the resultant file & cloned.vdi is intermediate file in vdi format.

6. Once the conversion and resize is completed, we would need to download GParted Live CD to resize the disk. On your VirtualBox Storage settings, set Gparted Live CD and boot the image.

7. On the GParted boot screen, choose default settings.

8. Resize the disk using the slider per your needs.

9. Choose ‘Apply Changes’ and Resizing would be complete.

Congrats! We have now resized the disk, continue using VirtualBox.

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Additional Resources :

• User Manual (HTML version)
• Ready to use Free VirtualBox Image out here.
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