Are you stuck with your small virtual disk partition for VirtualBox? You created the partition for some testing & practicing, now it needs more space. I was also stuck with the same problem; so I researched many forums, and here is the gist.

[Note: This procedure won’t work for VM with snapshots. So, please take note the fact about your system beforehand.]

  • Download Gparted, disk manager for Linux. It’ll come as an ISO file.
  • Boot into your guest OS, check, with df command, which partition you need to grow. Take note of that specific mounted HD, such as /dev/hdb/sda3
  • Take backup of your existing data, as I WILL NOT TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITY IF YOU DAMAGE YOUR DATA.
  • In host OS, Goto the command prompt by running, cmd.exe
  • Navigate to the Virtualbox installation folder
  • Execute the command:
C:\ VBoxManage modifyhd X:\yourVM_DiskPath_InHost\yourVM_Disk.vdi  --resize 40960

you will see progress as below:

10% ... 20% .. .. 100%

If you fail with a message like thid

“VBoxManage.exe: error: Resize hard disk operation for this format is not implemented yet!”

Now, you need this tool CloneVDI.exe from this VirtualBox forum-post. If you’re using this tool, remember to check “Increase virtual drive size to ” with your desired size.

VDI_tool

  • Now, Load the ISO file to the CD/DVD drive of your virtual Linux.

GParted.iso loaded on IDE Primary Master

  • Boot the Guest OS; from the boot menu, select CD/DVD drive, then it will boot in GParted tiny OS. Now the PartitionManager tool will come up automatically, like below:

Gparted partition-manager

  • Now “shrink/Grow” or “Move” your desired partition, but be careful. Don’t rename any of them. Be careful about your data.
  • Don’t worry, unless you clicked Apply, nothing has actually took place. When you are done with moving and resizing, you have to click Apply to commit the change

just before applying

  • Once completed, close Gparted, and then shutdown the OS
  • Unload the ISO aka virtual CD from virtual OS
  • Boot into the virtual OS again
  • Now, check that if the desired partition grew or not by using the df command

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