How to Expand the Drive in Windows XP VMware Player

With VMware, one physical hard drive can contain many virtual ones.

When you create a virtual machine in VMware, you specify the maximum amount of space that its virtual hard drive can consume on your computer's physical hard drive. If you end up installing more software on the virtual machine than you originally expected, however, this can result in the virtual machine running out of storage space. Thankfully, you do not have to delete and recreate the virtual machine. Expand the hard drive using the virtual machine's options menu to give yourself additional storage space to use.

Instructions

1. Launch VMware Player. Click the virtual machine that you want to expand the hard drive of, and then click "Edit virtual machine settings" on the right side of the window.

2. Click "Hard Disk" on the list of hardware displayed on the left side of the window.

3. Click the "Utilities" button on the right side of the window, and then click "Expand."

4. Type the new amount of storage space that the virtual hard drive should have, and then click the "Expand" button. VMware expands the virtual hard drive to the new desired capacity. Do not be alarmed if this process takes several minutes to complete.

5. Click "OK" twice, and then double-click the virtual machine to boot into the Windows XP guest operating system.

6. Click the "Start" button when Windows XP finishes booting, and then click "Control Panel."

7. Click "Switch to Classic View."

8. Select the "Administrative Tools" Control Panel icon.

9. Select the "Computer Management" icon.

10. Click "Disk Management" below the "Storage" heading in the left column of the window.

11. Click "C:" under "Volume" near the top of the window. The Windows XP virtual machine displays the additional space that you have added to the virtual hard drive as a black box labeled "Unallocated."

12. Right-click the "Unallocated" box and select "New Partition."

13. Click "Next" through the prompts and then click "Finish." The Windows XP guest operating system partitions and formats the extra space on the virtual hard drive. When this process is complete, you can begin storing data on the expanded space.

References

• VMware: Increasing the Size of a Virtual Disk