Expanding A Hyper-V Volume

[Big_PaPa]

Hi, I'm trying to expand a hyper-v environments drive. I use a program called "Replay4" for our backup's and it created a snapshot of the full C:/ drive. I imported it into hyper-v and time went on, my problem is now I need to expand the hard drive size. My problem is the whole "hard drive" is being used, or what the snapshot considered a full drive. So I'm wondering if there's a way in hyper-v to manipulate the drive so that it think's it's bigger then what it is? The partition that hyper-v is on is 6 terra so there's plenty of room to work with. So far I've tried diskpart.exe in command prompt but that didn't work because it viewed the whole drive as all ready being used. I've also tried going into the VM's settings and then going to the hard drive and going to edit, but i don't have the expand option that I would normally have with a standard VM since I imported this VM. So is there a way to expand it because the VM views it as an independent drive and not as part of a partition?

 

Hyper-V Server Stats - Windows Server 2008 R2 standard 64 bit (with all updates as of 4/23/12)

 

VM stats - Windows Server 2003 standard 32bit (all updates as of 4/23/12)

 

Thank you.

[waingro]

This is what I've done for Server 2003 VMs - shut down the VM, edit and expand the hard drive, start the VM and use disk manager to expand the C: drive. If it was set as fixed when it was originally made then that may explain why you don't have the option. If that is the case then see here:

http://social.techne...3-a900054e93a1/

You should see a couple good articles linked that in one way or another help you in your dilemma.

 

A walk-through for expanding VHDs:

http://www.petri.co....ith-hyper-v.htm

[Big_PaPa]

Hi, unfortunately the VHD resizer program didn't work. I get the following error.

 

[waingro]

Sounds/looks like you are trying to edit a vhd that has multiple snapshots associated with it, which is likely causing your issue. With your software based snapshots you may want to contact the vendor for tech support to merge those files.

 

For more understanding:

http://www.networkfo...shots-back-one-

If you look in the VM folder for the vhd and you see files with the extension of avhd that means that a snapshot or snapshots have been taken. Every time a new snapshot is made a new avhd file is created and all changes to the VM are written to that file (this is specific to Hyper-V snapshots).

 

Sorry about not checking back - I didn't have any notifications set up. :-/