Has anyone resized a Parallels 3 hdd?

wesley · Jun 13, 2007

When the VM is not running, you can go to the configuration screen and add a device... add a hard disk there, and in doing so you can make a new one of the size that you desire.

ptruskier · Jun 13, 2007

I just ran into this last night. So far, I have been pleased with the 3.0 upgrade, but I must say that I find this really annoying.

To remove a feature (which, based on a thread on this forum, is used by many) from an upgrade without any mention is a bad business practice, IMHO. The "sorry for any inconvenience" mea culpa in this thread hardly suffices.

Just as version 3 warns us that it is about to convert a virtual disk to a format that cannot be used by previous versions, it should warn us that the converted disk cannot be re-sized.

Robster · Jun 16, 2007

Damn...

Just read this thread.

I actually want/need to go the other direction.

My VM is set as 32Gb expanding and I want to set it as 10Gb fixed.

From all the comments here I am guessing I am out of luck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cheers.

Robin

Robster · Jun 16, 2007

Okay

I successfully resized my hard drive!!!!!

I downloaded a copy of Acronis Trueimage.

Created a new VM complete with HD file for XP and when it was all ready to install XP I closed it down.

I then attached this HD image to my existing VM instance, installed Acronis on teh original HD file and then told Acronis to clone the 32Gb drive to my new 9Gb drive.

It did this fine, once finished I started my new VM and it booted fine.

I am happy and I will probably buy Trueimage as I can use tit to back up my Bootcamp partition as well.

Cheers.

Robin

salvomic · Jun 21, 2007

Andrew @ Parallels said:
We are working on it very hard. It will be included into one of the nearest updates.

I hope you could release soon a new "Image Tool" version for Parallels 3.0

I need it also to try to resize "Haiku" (BeOS derived) hdd image.
I need only to resize the virtual hard disk, please help, as previously this method worked well with Parallels 2.5 and Haiku.

Many thanks in advance!

Regards

Salvo

Garyunc · Jun 21, 2007

HDD file date has not changed since I upgraded to 3.0

When I was on 2.5 the hdd file last modified date would change each time I used the hdd file. I upgraded to 3.0 and now it is stuck on the upgrade date and time. Is this normal? The VM appears to work fine but I like to backup my hdd to an external drive for safety and I want to make sure that it I am backing up the right data. Any advice?

patrickmast · Jun 21, 2007

Ankou said:
We are going to deliver VM HDD resizing solution with the next updates, please excuse us for any inconvenience caused. You can still make more free hard drive space available for the Guest OS by adding one more HDD to the VM configuration (Edit - Virtual Machine - Add - Hard Disk), then just partition and format you new HDD in the VM. For example, in Windows XP it can be done from Start - Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management - Storage - Disk Management.

Yes, but you can only add 4 HDD's to a VM. Can this be extended?

--
Sincerely,

Patrick Mast,
http://www.WinFakt.be
http://www.xHarbour.com

Intruder · Jun 22, 2007

Robster said:
Okay

I successfully resized my hard drive!!!!!

I downloaded a copy of Acronis Trueimage.

Created a new VM complete with HD file for XP and when it was all ready to install XP I closed it down.

I then attached this HD image to my existing VM instance, installed Acronis on teh original HD file and then told Acronis to clone the 32Gb drive to my new 9Gb drive.

It did this fine, once finished I started my new VM and it booted fine.

I am happy and I will probably buy Trueimage as I can use tit to back up my Bootcamp partition as well.

Cheers.

Robin

Would this work to move a VM to Bootcamp? Just mounting the Bootcamp partition vice the new VM instance?

Robster · Jun 24, 2007

Possibly.

I am sure I saw somewhere on their site that it allows for moving between physical and virtual hardware.

Of course I could have been dreaming!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Robin

Doobla · Jun 27, 2007

Andrew @ Parallels said:
We are working on it very hard. It will be included into one of the nearest updates.

Can you guys post a roadmap or something? When you released 2.5 there were a lot of bugs but no updates until the 3.0 release. Do you intend to release bug fix releases or do we wait for 4.0 and pay the upgrade fee so that we can get this and other issues fixed?

How are we to know unless you folks tell us what we can expect and when?

SD Macman · Jun 27, 2007

Robster said:
Okay

I successfully resized my hard drive!!!!!

I downloaded a copy of Acronis Trueimage.

Created a new VM complete with HD file for XP and when it was all ready to install XP I closed it down.

I then attached this HD image to my existing VM instance, installed Acronis on teh original HD file and then told Acronis to clone the 32Gb drive to my new 9Gb drive.

It did this fine, once finished I started my new VM and it booted fine.

I am happy and I will probably buy Trueimage as I can use tit to back up my Bootcamp partition as well.

Cheers.

Robin

The Acronis technique works. Somewhere on an older post I had found a variation of this which worked for for me in XP Pro SP2 with Parallels 3.0.

In the VM add a new hard drive. Restart VM. use acronis to clone the original drive to the new one (which can be smaller or larger depending on your needs). Then shut down the VM. go to edit VM. For Hard Disk 2 change the settings of this new drive to IDE 0:0 (in advanced settings). It gave me a message saying that position was taken and asking if I wanted to swap it. Said yes. Started up VM and was all done. Last step would be deleting old HDD (which now is labled Hard Disk 2).

salvomic · Jun 28, 2007

SD Macman said:
The Acronis technique works. Somewhere on an older post I had found a variation of this which worked for for me in XP Pro SP2 with Parallels 3.0.

In the VM add a new hard drive. ....

ok, this work well for Windows.
But not if we want resize a virtual hd first to restart the VM, with another OS. For example to use Haiku (BeOS derived) as a Guest OS, it's possible to download a "nightly build", then - with PD 2.5 - to resize it with Image Tool, then to use it as well. If the VM start without to resize first Haiku gives an error. With PD 3.0 all these operations are not possibile.
There are sure other reasons to resize first to start VM, so IMHO we need still a new Image Tool for PD 3.0, and we hope the Parallels Team would give us it very soon

Regards
Salvo

Joesixpack · Jun 29, 2007

For the record, a quick "Me Too" here. I have been looking like mad before I discovered that the rezie option is gone.

Any of the work arounds is a big PITA, hope the rezize option gets added back real soon!

GAH2343 · Jun 30, 2007

I don't understand how you did this "Created a new VM complete with HD file for XP and when it was all ready to install XP I closed it down." And I wish I did. Thanks. G

MarkMc · Jul 7, 2007

It would have been nice if in the list of "features" for 3.0 they said they took out the ability to re-size your hard disk images. What's the update on the utility? I am really stuck right now and need to resize my partition like yesterday.

1pauper1 · Jul 8, 2007

right-on markmc,

no resize, still have not received my free update,
and the competition has gone universal binary.

this was an $80 lesson that i will not throw any more money at.

Robster · Jul 8, 2007

Of course if you need to do it that urgently you could follow the route I took and posted earlier!!!!!!

There is a 30 day eval of Acronis Trueimage.

The only reason I have not purchased a copy is it will not run in Boot Camp!!!!!!!!!

Robin

qbit9 · Jul 9, 2007

wesley said:
Mmmkay, sorry to hang you dry so long. This is how I did it. It's not a resize in the sense that you stretch the original file, but the end result is basically the same. I've done this with WinXP installs.

1. Duplicate the .hdd file of the VM (I'll call the original #1 and the duplicate #2).
2. Create a new empty .hdd file (#3) of the desired size.
3. Map #3 as 0:0 (Primary Master).
4. Install the OS.
5. Map the #1 to 0:0, #2 to 1:0, and #3 to 1:1.
6. Once booted, remove everything except for boot-related files on #3, and copy over everything from #2 to #3.
7. Map #3 as 0:0 again and if the booting is successful, discard #1 and #2.

Now, XP and Vista have significantly different boot-related files. This Wikipedia article might be of some help in identifying what to preserve/remove in case of Vista:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winload.exe

In case of XP, I preserved NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, and BOOT.INI.

When in doubt, you could make a backup of #3 after stage 4 and play around with the boot-related files to see what happens.

DON'T TRY THIS. I did and it foobarred my original install. Good thing I had a backup on another machine. But still I lost a day's work.

RPElliott · Jul 16, 2007

I tried that but had no luck, since there is no option for creating a second HD with WIN2000 and Parallels 3.0. So the VM that I created to keep my bookkeeping safe is limited to the size I set at the beginning.

It is true that I can add a second HD on my Work VM which runs WIN XP, but as the other man pointed out the majority of the Windows software out there still requires that you install it on drive C: so unless the space problem is mainly due to the amount of data that you are using a second drive is of limited aid.

So we really do need a resizing function which works for WIN2000 and WIN XP and we need it soon. Does anyone know how the development going?

All the best,
Ralph

GregMP · Jul 17, 2007

Ankou said:
Hello folks

We are going to deliver VM HDD resizing solution with the next updates, please excuse us for any inconvenience caused. You can still make more free hard drive space available for the Guest OS by adding one more HDD to the VM configuration (Edit - Virtual Machine - Add - Hard Disk), then just partition and format you new HDD in the VM. For example, in Windows XP it can be done from Start - Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management - Storage - Disk Management.

I've set up a second virtual HDD several times, my goal is to have a new, plain, 3000MB, static partition for paging virtual memory for Windows. Every time I set up the drive and try to start from the boot camp master partition, I receive this message:

More than one Windows partitions are found. This is not a standard Boot Camp configuration. Please refer to the Parallels Desktop for Mac User Guide, Using Boot Camp Windows XP Installation chapter for instructions on how to configure Parallels virtual machine in case of a non-standard Boot Camp configuration on your Macintosh computer.

From what I've read, this appeared to be a dumb as nails stop-gap sollution to the removal of the drive expansion tool.

Could someone help me out here? I feel I'm missing something very basic.