Resize a Hard Disk

You can increase the usable space in a virtual hard disk. You cannot reduce the size of a hard disk. You cannot make a blank hard disk smaller after it has been formatted.

Prerequisites

Having manual or AutoProtect snapshots in your virtual machine prevents you from making changes to a virtual hard disk. You must delete the snapshots before you can make a change.

Shut down or power off the virtual machine. You cannot change the setting while the virtual machine is powered on or suspended.

Procedure

Select Window > Virtual Machine Library.
Select a virtual machine in the Virtual Machine Library window and click Settings.
In the Settings window, click the hard disk you want to resize.
Use the Disk size slider to set the new size.
The maximum disk size for any hard disk is 8TB.
(Optional) Under Advanced options, set the Bus type for the hard disk to IDE, SCSI, SATA, or NVMe.

Note: If the guest operating system does not support NVMe, the NVMe option is disabled.

Changing this setting is recommended only for advanced users. Fusion selects the bus type that is most appropriate for the virtual machine guest operating system.

Set your disk space configuration, depending on the constraints of the file system.

Option	Description
Pre-allocate disk space	Can give better performance for your virtual machine. If you allocate all the disk now, you cannot use the VMware Tools shrink disk feature later. Allocating all disk space now is a time-consuming operation that cannot be canceled. Also, the allocation process requires as much physical disk space as you specify for the virtual disk.
Split disk into multiple files	Default. Some file systems, such as FAT and UFS, cannot support very large files. Use this option if your virtual machine will be used in a hard drive with a file system that does not support very large files. This option splits your virtual disk into multiple files. Also, use this option if you might place the virtual machine on an external FAT drive or if you might move the virtual machine to an external drive.

Option

Description

Pre-allocate disk space

Can give better performance for your virtual machine. If you allocate all the disk now, you cannot use the VMware Tools shrink disk feature later. Allocating all disk space now is a time-consuming operation that cannot be canceled. Also, the allocation process requires as much physical disk space as you specify for the virtual disk.

Split disk into multiple files

Default. Some file systems, such as FAT and UFS, cannot support very large files. Use this option if your virtual machine will be used in a hard drive with a file system that does not support very large files. This option splits your virtual disk into multiple files. Also, use this option if you might place the virtual machine on an external FAT drive or if you might move the virtual machine to an external drive.

Apply the changes and choose automatic or manual partition resize for Windows guests.

Option	Description
Click Apply.	For Windows guests, the partition is automatically resized when the hard disk is resized.
Click Apply while pressing the Option key.	The hard disk is resized but the partition is not. To manually resize the partition of the guest, see Resize a Windows Partition with the Disk Management Tool.

Results

Fusion displays a progress dialog box as it rebuilds the virtual disk.