Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Resize your VB virtual disk

Collapse
This topic is closed.
X
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Resize your VB virtual disk

    Last year I had installed my legal copy of XP as a guest OS using Oracle's VirtualBox. I "thought" I'd only need 10GB. Install Microsoft Security Essentials, iTunes, FireFox, QuickTime and backup an iPad Touch PLUS all the files that Microsoft automatically downloads to fix holes and bugs and suddenly I noticed that I had less than 300MB of VHD space left.

    A quick search using Google found this tutorial on the topic:
    http://www.my-guides.net/en/content/view/122/26/

    and this video showing how to do it using Ubuntu:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGLZ9K1IjOQ

    When I first fired up VB I got a message from Oracle saying my 4.04r version had a 4.08 update waiting. I installed it on my Lucid Lynx, which went without a hitch. Then I followed the steps (approximately because the tutorial uses the 3.x version of VB and I was using the 4.08 version).

    Bottom line: easy to do. My guest XP now has 30GB of virtual HD.
    "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
    – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.

    #2
    Re: Resize your VB virtual disk

    Way to 'expand' your horizons!
    Using Kubuntu Linux since March 23, 2007
    "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data." - Sherlock Holmes

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Resize your VB virtual disk

      Ya!

      Now, if I could only expand a couple other "horizons" I am looking at....
      "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
      – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Resize your VB virtual disk

        Thank you for pinning this one. Right now I'm OK as I have dealt with XP for SOOOOOOO long I knew the updates gobble up space, even when you remove the $KB directories there are some underlying files that XP needs to keep and take up space. Over time your space will disappear and nothing to do but do what you did. Will come in handy when my 80gb VDI gets full. Hopefully not but as I said above eventually with the XP updates it might.



        Edit: I actually have gone through this before on my XP. Had it at 20GB and went to 80GB. Don't like Dynamic. All of mine are static. Even have a WIN98 VM (nostalgia reasons ). Yeah, yeah I know but I have been dealing with MS products for a long time so it is unfortunately a part of me though with Hoary that all changed.

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Resize your VB virtual disk

          Originally posted by MoonRise
          Even have a WIN98 VM (nostalgia reasons ).
          Nice to know I'm not the only one who keeps them around for nostalgia reasons!

          On airline flights I like to load up the VM of Windows 3.1, full screen it and on my Dell notebook from 2007 complain how my company is too cheap to upgrade to XP or better. Get quite a few stares from doing this.

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Resize your VB virtual disk

            Originally posted by ScottyK
            VM of Windows 3.1, full screen it and on my Dell notebook from 2007 complain how my company is too cheap to upgrade to XP or better. Get quite a few stares from doing this.
            LOL!!! That's a good one. I've done similar at work.

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Resize your VB virtual disk

              I made a living installing Windows 3.1 FWG and writing custom software for clients on it. IMO, it was the best OS Microsoft released until XP SP3.

              It was Win95 crashing several times per day between Jan 1, 1998 and May 1, 1998, forcing me to reinstall it FIVE TIMES, that led me to seek out and return to the latest OS/2 at Barnes & Nobel. It was there that I discovered a paperback book by Bill Brush titles "Learn Linux in 24 Hours". It included a copy of RH 5.0 on a CD. For $25 what could I lose? OS/2 cost a couple hundred at the time. What I though might be a problem with Sony's hardware turned out to be totally the fault of Win95. RH5 ran solid as a rock on that Sony, not crashing once between May 1, 1998 and Sept, 2008, when I moved to SuSE because I liked the look of KDE 1.0 Beta. It has been a love affair every since!
              "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
              – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Resize your VB virtual disk

                Good tip!

                What I have also done on my VirtualBox XP (which I also originally only gave 10GB of space) was to generate another virtual disk and map it to Drive D: in XP, thus having Drives C: and D:. I'm using drive D: for XP specific data.

                I also (for convenience) have one of my Hard Disk partitions (50Gb) designated as "shared-data" (I have two 160 Gb Hard Drives on my system with about 8 partitions between them for various uses including reciprocal backups for important "bits"). Using the VB shared folder function you can mount that drive as "shared" and thus use it from either your Linux system (Natty, in my case) or with experimental systems or, indeed, with the XP box. This is quite handy for MP3 files, documents, photos etc which are essentially static data. I used to use it for iTunes in XP until I got fed up with Apple and let it rot on the vine, and began using an Android phone.

                Just another set of options!

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Resize your VB virtual disk

                  Originally posted by GreyGeek
                  Ya!

                  Now, if I could only expand a couple other "horizons" I am looking at....
                  Just what R those extra "horizons" maybe we can help...

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Resize your VB virtual disk

                    Originally posted by PhilT
                    ...
                    What I have also done on my VirtualBox XP (which I also originally only gave 10GB of space) was to generate another virtual disk and map it to Drive D: in XP, thus having Drives C: and D:. I'm using drive D: for XP specific data.
                    ....
                    I have done that but the closer your C: gets to being full the slower Windows runs. When you run out of C: space Windows is done.
                    "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
                    – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: Resize your VB virtual disk

                      Originally posted by danix803
                      .....
                      Just what R those extra "horizons" maybe we can help...
                      The horizons that are marked by loss of memory, loss of vocabulary, loss of stamina, loss of hair, loss of leg strength, loss of my handsome looks ... err... well, maybe not that.... (ya can't lose what you don't have)

                      I've tried SAM-E, fish oil, etc.... They only slow things down. Do you have a bottle filled with water from the Fountain of Youth that I can take a sip from every now and then?
                      "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
                      – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: Resize your VB virtual disk

                        Well GG, getting old is not bad when you consider the alternative.

                        I followed the post you made and increased the size of my XP install in VB to 60 GB. There were a couple of places where the instructions had to be modified for the current version of VB and it took a little looking around to find where to do this. Also the instructions for using Gparted lacked a detail, in that the new partition must be created and formatted before you can copy to it.
                        Never too old to learn
                        Ault, CO, USA

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: Resize your VB virtual disk

                          While expanding my VB 4.08 XP guest OS I had to do the same things you did, but it wasn't hard to figure out, so I didn't mention any details, even if I could remember them.
                          "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
                          – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: Resize your VB virtual disk

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: Resize your VB virtual disk

                              They say there are two things you lose when you get older, the first is your memory, and I can't remember what the second is.
                              Never too old to learn
                              Ault, CO, USA

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X