fatVM extends your virtual machine's C: drive

fatVM is a reliable, robust, and safe, single-click solution for extending the C drive of your virtual disk that is becoming full. fatVM extends the VM even in cases when it has snapshots and clones. You can use fatVM with full confidence because it preserves your original disk, which remains available to you in case the need ever arises.

Mac friendly

A Mac user can download and install the fatVM dmg just like any other Mac application. fatVM provides a simple, intuitive, interface and a reliable process that hides the technical complexity of extending a virtual disk.

For most Mac users, extending the C drive of Window® running within VMware Fusion® can be a daunting task. There are several online tutorials that do provide instructions on how to perform low-level Windows system administration tasks, invoke UNIX utilities and manage disk formats (like partition tables) using third-party tools. Even if you were to follow such steps, they do not handle dependencies, e.g., snapshots or clones, well and you may not necessarily be able to extend the disk. You may also discover that recovering from failures to extend the C-drive can be a very challenging experience.

fatVM packages the process of extending the VM and provides you with the capability of executing it through a single click.

Single-click operation

fatvm shows you a menu of VM’s that belong to VMware Fusion’s ® Virtual Machine Library. You can either select a VM from that menu, or you can you can drag and drop the .vmx configuration file for a new VM, to extend it. fatVM analyzes the selected VM and discovers the current size of the VM's disk. All you have to do is to select the size you want to extend it to, and press Extend; fatVM does the rest:

1. Verify whether VM is running and terminate the operation if it is found running
2. Analyze VM to determine its current size
3. Discover partitions and system disk
4. Verify disk type
5. Create snapshot and new disk
6. Attach ISO
7. Create Windows partition
8. Extend Windows file system
9. Boot Windows to ensure that chkdsk runs
10. Complete VM extension.

Super fast cross-OS VM browser

Just like Google’s Chrome, a fast, lightweight, cross-OS Web browser, fatVM comes bundled with a super fast, lightweight browser for offline VM's. You can view 50+ VM's simultaneously. Just drag and drop the VM you would like to explore. Some highlights of the browser are:

• Supports cross-OS Browsing: Browse Linux VM's on Windows, Linux and Windows VM on Mac
• Discovers Applications installed inside the VM's. Supports Ubuntu, Red Hat, and Windows Virtual Machines
• Runs in user mode, does not install any kernel level components
• Includes Offline Registry & Partition Table Browser for Windows VM's

Undo and rollback

fatVM leaves the original files untouched and creates an extended VM in a separate directory as shown below:

• If there is any problem with extending the VM, you can select Rollback under Tools and simply delete the fatVM folder to leave your work environment in the same state as before the extension was attempted.
• The extended VM is clone of the original VM. For this reason, the original VM must not be booted after it has been extended.

What does it replace?

If you search on Google for "how to extend vmdk" or "how to extend virtual disk" you will find several useful blog articles. Here are some of them

• HOWTO: Extend an existing Windows Virtual Disk in VMware ESX3
• Extending of VMDK file from the VMware Communities
• Extend boot volume of Windows Server 2000/2003
• How to extend the VMDK and the Windows disk

Each of them describe a similar approach that has a complex sequence of steps. If any of the steps fail, the user is left with the task of researching how to recover and proceed further. VMware does not support extending disks with snapshots or parents, the user has to make a full copy of the VM before trying any of these approaches. This may not always be possible due to physical disk space constraints.

fatVM was born from our experience of trying to follow these steps and dealing with failures in our environment. For example, diskpart failed to work on a primary partition, Gparted also failed to work on the drive; after booting Windows the extra space that was added was not visible. A simple task of extending the virtual disk turned out to be a frustrating experience. You will find several such examples cited in the VMware communities and on the Internet:

• Help, please, cannot start VM after changing HD size with vdiskmanager GUI
• Unable to clean up deleted files: The specified virtual disk needs repair.
• Expanding your VMDK file

This problem is especially acute for Mac users who have no expertise in dealing with low-level Windows administration commands and UNIX utilities and find this process arcane

• Expanding the Hard Drive Space on VMware Fusion

fatVM is a replacement for these manual steps. It automates many of the approaches described earlier, handles the corner cases, and extends virtual disks even when there are snapshots. It preserves your original disk so you have don't have to worry about copying it for safe keeping. Do download and use fatVM; please let us know how it worked for you.