Fixyourcpu’s technical blog and tips

I had a server running Windows 2003 on Vmware Esx 4 that was running out of disk space.  It is a pretty simple process to extend the disk space but it took some hunting around to find it.

1. Shut down the virtual machine.
2. Edit the disk you want to expand using the Vmware client, edit the disk and increase the size.
3. Boot the virtual machines into Windows, go to disk management and verify the unallocated disk space is available.
4. You won’t be able to extend the volume if its the boot volume so you’ll need a partition manager to extend the disk.
5. Download the GParted open source partition manager Live CD, mount the iso and boot the virtual machine from it, then extend the disk and boot into Windows.

I believe in Windows 2008 you can do all this from within Windows but haven’t had to test that yet.

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