Last Updated: August 27, 2017
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28.34K
· kewitz

Converting virtual disks between fixed and dynamic size

You can convert a dynamic sized VDI or VMDK into a fixed (and faster) fixed size disk when you deploy your VM using VirtualBox tools.

VBoxManage clonehd dynamic.vdi fixed.vdi --variant Fixed

...and if you need to resize the disk you can use:

VBoxManage modifyhd fixed.vdi --resize [megabytes]

3 Responses
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Actually, the --resize flag for modifyhd only works for dynamically-allocated VDI's.

From the documentation: This currently works only for VDI and VHD formats, and only for the dynamically allocated variants.

http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch08.html#vboxmanage-modifyvdi

over 1 year ago ·

@cglinka Hey, thanks! Since i wrote this a long time ago i'm not certain anymore, tho i really think that worked for me running VBox on Windows 7.

over 1 year ago ·

vdi output is default, add --format VMDK as option if you need vmdk output

over 1 year ago ·