Actions such as creating a VHD virtual hard disk in Windows 10 from a physical one or increasing the size of the hard disk in a VirtualBox virtual machine are especially useful for those who require more storage space on their computers. With this next tutorial we will teach you the latter.
How to increase the hard disk size in a VirtualBox virtual machine
Before making any changes, it is important to ensure that you properly shut down your virtual machine , as it will be necessary to make changes. Once you have correctly verified this, continue with the process.
Before you begin, we recommend that you consider other measures how to add another hard drive to a virtual machine in Windows 10 , which might better suit what you are looking for.
Without further ado let’s start with this tutorial to increase the size of the hard disk in a VirtualBox virtual machine.
Create a new storage unit
- The first thing you will need to do is click on the virtual machine to which you want to expand the storage. After this, you should go to the VirtualBox settings options. To do so, press the “Settings” option.
- There it will show all the settings related to the virtual machine. As you can see, there is the “Storage” section, so you should go to that option.
- Under “Storage” you will find the “Storage Tree”. The virtual machine’s hard drives are displayed there. You can easily recognize the correct drive since it has the name of your virtual machine.
- Press the small hard disk shaped button (containing the + symbol). It is possible that the program will ask you for confirmation, if so, click on the option “Create a new disk” .
- The unit type setting will appear on the screen. You can leave the default option (VDI VirtualBox Disk Image). Then press the “Next” option. Choose the option “Dynamically reserved” or “Fixed size”. We recommend that you select the first option (fixed size) and press “Next”.
- Select the size you want for the new storage unit. At the top you can select the name you want for that unit. To finish the operation, press the “Create” option.
- Go back to the storage configuration options. Here, you will need to unlink the old hard drive. To do this, press the blue button named “Delete selected connection in storage tree” .
Copy information from old new hard drive
- To continue with the process, go to the VirtualBox folder located at “C: \ Program Files \ Oracle \ VirtualBox”. There, type “CMD” above the address bar and press the “Enter” key.
- The Windows command console will be displayed. Here you will type the following: VboxManage clonehd “C: \ Drive \ old hard drive.vdi” “C: \ Drive \ final hard drive.vdi –existing. After writing the code above press “Enter”. Note that you will need to replace the information in “C: \ Drive \ old hard drive.vdi” and “C: \ Drive \ new hard drive.vdi”) with the location of the old and new hard drive.
Increase the size of the hard disk in VirtualBox virtual machine
Now, you need to start your virtual machine. This action is done for the purpose of using the extended space that has been created previously. To do this, go to the disk manager for the virtual machine’s operating system. If it’s Windows, you’ll find it as “Disk Management . “
As you can see, there is a drive named “Unassigned.” To allocate this storage space, right click on the primary drive you want to extend. Click on the “Extend Volume …” option . The configuration screen will be displayed, there press the “Next” option.
On the setup screen, allocate the available space to the drive you want to extend. When doing this, hit the “Next” option. As the last step, click “Finish”. After which you have successfully increased the size of the disk in your virtual machine.
VirtualBox is an excellent tool, which can be complemented by being able to even share files and folders from the PC to the virtual machine . Undoubtedly, you can extend the capabilities of your computer with this useful program.
