VirtualBox: Enlarge the hard disk later

If you don't have enough space on a hard disk in VirtualBox, you can enlarge it later. We show you how to do this.

Zoom in on VirtualBox hard drives

With VirtualBox, you cannot change the disk size through the user interface. Depending on the operating system, you have to enter a short command in the command line. We show you both versions for Windows as well as for Linux and MacOS.

1. First find the path to your VirtualBox installation and the path and name of your virtual hard disk. (Example for the installation: C: \ Program Files \ Oracel \ VirtualBox \; Example for the virtual hard disk: C: \ Users \ Max \ VirtualBox VMs \ Windows10 \ Windows10.vdi)
2. For Windows you now have to open the console. Press the key combination [Windows key] + [R], enter "cmd" and confirm with "OK". For Linux and MacOS, please read on from point 4.
3. Now enter the following command and replace our placeholders with your paths from point 1: "C: \ Program \ Oracle \ VirtualBox \ VBoxManage.exe" modifyhd "C: \ [path to volume] .vdi" --resize 51200 ( twice minus)
4. For Linux or MacOS you need the terminal, which you can open via Nautilus (Ubuntu) or the Finder. You only need the path to the virtual hard disk for the following command: VBoxManage modifyhd "/pfad/zum/volume.vdi" --resize 51200 (twice minus)
5. The last point of the command is the desired size of the hard drive in megabytes. if you are not sure how to convert gigabytes to megabytes, here is a handy converter.

Do you want to expand your options with VirtualBox? Then take a look at our VirtualBox Extension Pack.