If you want to resize the disk under VMware, you have to do some of the steps in a command window on your computer (the host), some of it in the VMware GUI, some in gparted – and finally observe the results in your guest OS to see if everything went as planned.

Step 1: Remove any snapshots you might have. This will take time. It does not take a long time to create a snapshot, but removing them is slow. Press Ctrl+M on your powered-down machine and mark the snapshots you want to remove and then click remove. Go for a cup of coffee.

Step 2: Resize the disk using the supplied vmware-vdiskmanager tool:

vmware-vdisktool -x 20GB YourVMdisk.vmdk

where disk size is the new, absolute, size you want. Add appropriate paths to the above, of course.

The resizing will take time, so go for another cup of coffee. When this finishes, go into the VM and observe that you in Disk Manager now have a raw disk corresponding to the difference between your old disk and the size you requested. To put this new size to use, you must use a partition manager, for instance GParted. Downoad the ISO file.

Step 3: Mount the GParted file you downloaded in Step 3 and start your VM. Be quick and press Esc on the POST to enter the boot menu. Select the CD player.

Step 4: Answer all the boot questions.

Step 5: I had problems controlling the mouse, so be prepared to use the keyboard. Experiment… Select the partition you wish to expand and select Resize/Move. I changed the new Size to be the max allowed – and had to try twice to get this working. You might want to leave one MB after the resized partition, to avoid problems later. Accept changes and ask it to process this.

Step 6: Restart the VM and log into Windows. Windows may ask for you to reboot after it has applied changes to the hardware. Do that and then log in again and go into Disk Manager (MMC snap-in) to check the size. if the Windows report corresponds to the one reported from Disk Manager and this again corresponds to what you expected, you’re done. If not …

Step 7: Restart GParted and confirm that Free Space following is indeed 1MB and not 0. If so, do a resize – and accept its complaint that you do not really contribute any changes.

Step 8: Reboot. When Windows starts, it may ask for a file check. Let it. Then, when fully restarted and logged in, you mayfinally see the numbers add up in Disk Manager.