Yay !! Silly Question Time

[mattx]

I have a VM [ Windows 2008 ] sitting on a ESXi Host. Just a single partition. What tool can I use to partition this up safely ?

[tmcd35]

You want to partition the virtual hard drive or the host hardrive the VM is sitting on? If it's the virtual drive is it fixed size or expanding? Not sure that matters to much, but especially if it's an expanding, I wouldn't bother personally. Just create a new virtual hard drive and attach it to the VM as a second drive.

[mattx]

You want to partition the virtual hard drive or the host hardrive the VM is sitting on? If it's the virtual drive is it fixed size or expanding? Not sure that matters to much, but especially if it's an expanding, I wouldn't bother personally. Just create a new virtual hard drive and attach it to the VM as a second drive.

 

The virtual drive - I don't want to create another one because I don't want to waste the space on the host. Basically the VM is 100 Gig, I want to split this 50/50 or 60/40

[externo6]

You should be able to 'shrink' the volume in disk manager (Control Pannel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management) On the side pane there should be disk management. Right click the disk and shrink it.

[tmcd35]

I think the issue you will have is the system drive. Windows can be abit funny trying to repartition that. I believe 08R2 and above can actually do it now using built in tools. Partition Magic would do it. Another favourite is to make a temporary copy of the VMDK (incase anything goes wrong) and use a Linux installer to shrink the existing Windows partition. Or a Clonezilla image to a smaller VMDK.

 

Personally I'd shrink the existing VMDK (VMadmin.co.uk - How to Resize a VMs Virtual Disk (.VMDK)) and then attach a second expanding VMDK for the new partition. This why I always using expaning images rather than fixed. The joys of virtualisation.

[mattx]

Thanks all - I'll take a snapshot first and will then shrink it. If it goes belly up I should be able to revert back to the snapshot.

[tmcd35]

Don't know if using snapshots are wise in this instance, since you're messing with the files partitioning information. If you have got the hard drive space, just temporarily, take a full copy of the VMDK. Belts and braces.

[SYNACK]

If you boot to windows pe or the recovery bit of an install dvd you can then use the diskpart utility to shrink it really quickly and easily, stuff like parted usually requires a bunch of time and a full chkdsk to make sure it has not cooked anything. The only reason you can't do this in the gui is because it is the system and pagefile partition.

[Domino]

You can absolutely shrink the system partition from the disk management gui in 2008 onwards - I did it this morning.

[mac_shinobi]

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1036609#Resizing%20a%20partition

 

Not sure how much use this is

[mattx]

Ended up using this - Free Partition Software for Server - AOMEI Partition Assistant Lite

Worked without a problem