Resizing an IDE virtual disk, part two

A long time ago I wrote this article about resizing an IDE virtual disk. I just ran out of diskspace on my Windows 7 VM and I needed to increase the disk. Unfortunately the Windows 7 VM had and IDE disk and the Web Client didn’t allow me to simply increase the size of the VMDK. So this is what I had to do, and yes I agree it should be easier than this.

1. Remove the IDE vmdk from the VM
2. Edit the “vmdk” file (can be found under cd /vmfs/volumes/<datastore_name>/<vm_name>/)
3. Change ddb.adapterType from “ide” to “lsilogic”
4. Add the IDE vmdk to the VM
5. Change the size of the disk
6. Remove the IDE vmdk from the VM
7. Edit the “vmdk” file (can be found under cd /vmfs/volumes/<datastore_name>/<vm_name>/)
8. Change ddb.adapterType from “lsilogic” to “ide”
9. Add the IDE vmdk to the VM
10. Power on the VM and “extend” the partition within Windows 7

There might be an easier way of doing this, and I guess using “vmkfstools -X” would also work, I just preferred to take this route instead as I knew it would work.

** note to self, don’t import W7 VMs with an IDE disk, it sucks **