Create an Expandable Disk on a Hosted Destination

You can save space on the destination virtual machine by coping only the existing data from a source virtual disk.

You can create an expandable disk by using volume-based or disk-based cloning.

Prerequisites

You must select a hosted destination, such as VMware Workstation, to use the Not pre-allocated disk option.

On the Options page of the Conversion wizard, click Data to copy in the options list.

Procedure

• Use disk-based cloning to create an expandable disk.
  1. From the Data copy type drop-down menu, select Copy all disks and maintain layout.
  2. From the Type drop-down menu, select Not pre-allocated.
  3. To apply your settings, select another option from the options list or click Next.
• Use volume-based cloning to create an expandable disk.
  1. From the Data copy type drop-down menu, select Select volumes to copy and click Advanced.
  2. Select the Destination layout tab, select a virtual disk, and select Not pre-allocated from the Type drop-down menu.
  3. To apply your settings, select another option from the options list or click Next.

Results

Converter Standalone copies only the existing data to the destination datastore. The empty disk space from the virtual disk is not copied to the datastore. As you use the destination virtual machine and write new data to the disk, the size of the destination disk grows.