How to preallocated space after VM is already created without Preallocated

[EclipseAgent]

So, I converted a VM from a ESX box to my linux host, and decided to not pre-allocate the space. I don't seem to like the performance and decided that possibly making it pre-allocated would give me the performance I am looking for (also defragging the virtual file) ..

Is this possible without the use of Converter? This is VMWare Workstation 6.0 on Linux

[oreeh · Accepted solution]

You can use vdiskmanager to convert the disk - make sure you don't have snapshots when doing this.

[KevinG]

If you are looking to convert the virtual disk into a single growsable virtual disk, you will want to use the -t 0 option

vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -r "sourceDisk.vmdk" -t 0 "destinationDisk.vmdk"

Use quotes " " around the source.dmdk and the destinationDisk.vmdk if there are any spaces in the fullpath to these files.

As a precaution you should always have a backup of your VM before making any changes and make sure that your VM does not have snapshots

[EclipseAgent]

Thank you for your reply. Although "Kevin's" was close he must not have read my whole post since he included a windows binary and not the linux version, therefore I am going to reward the answer to you.

./vmware-vdiskmanager -r /home/bkevan/vmware/bkevanvm/bkevanvm.vmdk -t 2 /home/bkevan/vmware/bkevanvm/bkevanvm1.vmdk

Worked like a charm.. renamed the vmdk file then it broke, just renamed back and re-pointed to that file and all was good.