Comments on: Howto: Expand your C:\ drive in VMWARE ESX 3.5

By: TZ

TZ — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:32:30 +0000

Thanks much, this worked great!

By: Sergio

Sergio — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:44:11 +0000

I just went through the process of expanding 4 of our servers. I am running ESX 3.5 VC 2.5 and I spent so much time researching the right steps and it turns out to be very easy if you are running Server 2008 VM’s.

Steps for Server 2008:
Power down VM
In VC edit the HD to the new size
Power on VM
Under Storage Management, rescan drive and then right click on drive and choose extend volume.

You are done!!!

I did have to extend a WinXP and I did use extpart(dell tool) and it worked very well.
instead of using the extend volume utility in 2008, download the extpart and then in a command window change directory to location
Example:
To extend the g: volume by 1 GB (1024 MB) use the following command:
extpart g: 1024

Hope this helps

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 20:28:26 +0000

Never try the method that You are saying here. I’ve always use vmkfstools. After that depend what version of Windows:
5.0 Diskpart
or
6.0 Disk Management

By: Fredrik

Fredrik — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:11:40 +0000

Have anyone tried Dell EXTPART to extend a system drive?
I’ve used it on occation and not (yet) encountered any problems.

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/format.aspx?releaseid=R64398&c=us&l=en&cs=&s=gen

Use vmkfstools or the VI client to extend the disk. Start up the VM and use EXTPART inside Windows to expand the disk. Fast (scary fast) and works on system partitions.

Not just me using it either it seems..
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/209553

//Fredrik

By: Benoit

Benoit — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 20:52:09 +0000

that’s a very good tips

thanks for that

By: Dan Edwards

Dan Edwards — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:21:31 +0000

Dont you need t use the vmkfstools -x ##gb filename.vmdk first to expand the vmdk file inside of the ESX box?