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How to increase the disk size of VM in VirtualBox

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To increase the disk size of a VirtualBox VM, follow these steps:

  1. Shut Down the VM: Ensure the VM is turned off before proceeding.
  2. Resize the Virtual Disk:
    • Open a terminal (or command prompt) on your host machine.
    • Navigate to the directory where the VirtualBox installation is located (e.g., C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox on Windows).
    • Run the following command to resize the disk. Replace <size_in_MB> with the desired size in MB and <path_to_vdi_file> with the path to your VM’s VDI file:VBoxManage modifyhd "<path_to_vdi_file>" --resize <size_in_MB>
      For example:VBoxManage modifyhd "C:\Users\YourUsername\VirtualBox VMs\YourVM\YourDisk.vdi" --resize 20480
    • Note: This only works for VDI and VHD files, not VMDK files.
  3. Expand the Partition within the VM:
    • Start your VM.
    • Open the Disk Management tool if you’re using Windows as the guest OS:
      • Right-click on the Start Menu and select Disk Management.
      • Find your newly resized virtual disk and extend the partition into the unallocated space.
    • For Linux guests, use GParted or similar partition management tools to expand the partition into the unallocated space.

After following these steps, your VirtualBox VM should recognize the increased disk space.