HCM9.0: Resizing the Virtual Hard Drive

Once I reclaimed the hard drive space from my database, I had to shrink the hard drive in order to get my image smaller. Here is what I did.

Shrinking the Partition

I used a version of Linux called Knoppix. You can download it from here.

I never actually burned the image to CD. I just opened the properties of the CD drive in the virtual machine (while it was shutdown) and told it to use the iso image that I downloaded instead of the physical drive.

Determining the how small you can shrink the drive:

sudo ntfsresize --info /dev/sda1

Changing the size of the drive (test)

sudo ntfsresize --no-action --size=42831122432 /dev/sda1

Changing the size of the drive

sudo ntfsresize --size=42831122432 /dev/sda1

Changing the size of the partition

sudo fdisk /dev/sda

  • m for help
  • p for print (note the partition number and type/id)
  • d for delete
  • n for new partition (choose primary and same partition number and desired size +###M)
  • t for changing the partition type/id
  • p for print ( verify everything is the correct)
  • w for write

Shrinking an Unshrinkable Hard Drive

The only way that you can get a smaller hard drive if you can’t shrink the drive is to copy the data to a new virtual drive.

Copy the partition table.

sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1

Copy the partition itself.

sudo dd if=/dev/sda1 of/dev/sdb1

Note: I had to reboot between copying the partition table and the actual partition.

Shrinking a Shrinkable Hard Drive

Shutdown the virtual machine.

From a command window run:

"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Server\vmware-mount " m: c:\VirtualMachines\HCM90\Database.vmdk
"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Server\vmware-vdiskmanager.exe" -p m:
"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Server\vmware-mount " m: /d
"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Server\vmware-vdiskmanager.exe" -k WindowsServer2003Standard.vmd

Note: to expand, you would use the -x option

"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Server\vmware-vdiskmanager.exe" -x 30Gb WindowsServer2003Standard.vmdk

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