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I have a partitioned virtual machine disk image created by vmware.

What I want to do is resize that by 10GB.

The file size is showing as 64424509440. Or 60GB.

So I ran this:

dd if=/dev/zero of=./win7.img seek=146800640 count=0

It ran without errors and I can verify the new size is in fact 75161927680 bytes or 70GB.

This is where it gets a little odd.

I started the guest domain in xen which is a Windows 7 enterprise machine.

What I was expecting to see in diskmgmt.msc is 2 partitions. 1 system partition at the start of around 100MB and near 60GB partition (which is C drive) followed by around 10GB of free space.

Actually what I saw was a 70GB partition!?!

That confused me... so I decided to run the Check Disk which when you set it on the C drive it asks you to reboot so it'll run on boot. So I did that and during the boot it ran the checks. It got all the way through stage 3 and didn't show any errors at all.

Looked at the partitions in disk manager and now C drive has shrunk back to 60GB and there is no free space.

What gives?

Ok, I thought I'd try mounting it under Dom0 and examining it with fdisk.

This is what I get when mounted 

sudo xl block-attach 0 tap:aio:/home/xen/vms/otoy_v1202-xen.img xvda w
sudo fdisk -l /dev/xvda

Disk /dev/xvda: 64.4 GB, 64424509440 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7832 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x582dfc96

    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/xvda1   *           1          13      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/xvda2              13        7833    62810112    7  HPFS/NTFS

Note the cylinder boundary comment.

When I run 

sudo cfdisk /dev/xvda

I get: 

FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 1: Partition ends in the final partial cylinder                       
                                                  Press any key to exit cfdisk

So I guess this is a bigger problem than first thought.

How can I fix this?

EDIT: Oops, the cylinder boundary thing is not a problem at all since disks have used LBA etc. So that threw me for a moment... still the problem exists...

Now this output looks a little different.

sudo sfdisk -uS -l /dev/xvda

Disk /dev/xvda: 7832 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = sectors of 512 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot    Start       End   #sectors  Id  System
/dev/xvda1   *      2048    206847     204800   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/xvda2        206848 125827071  125620224   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/xvda3             0         -          0   0  Empty
/dev/xvda4             0         -          0   0  Empty

BTW: I do have a backup of the image so if you help me mess it up that's ok.

EDIT:

sudo parted /dev/xvda print free

Model: Xen Virtual Block Device (xvd)
Disk /dev/xvda: 64.4GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
        32.3kB  1049kB  1016kB           Free Space
 1      1049kB  106MB   105MB   primary  ntfs         boot
 2      106MB   64.4GB  64.3GB  primary  ntfs
        64.4GB  64.4GB  1049kB           Free Space

Cool. Linux is showing free space at the end of the drive which is what I expect. But, the start and end is the same. No wonder windows can't see it. How can I correct this? obviously the partition table is broken somehow.

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OK Windows 7 uses 2 partitions. 1 is the boot partition and the other is the OS. the free space you have is because the image was re-sized not the partition. from windows you must re-size the C: Partition. – Taylor Bioniks Mar 23 '12 at 5:55
Correct, the image was resized and I expected the partition to still remain at 60GB. But windows is not detecting the free space I would have expected to see and parted is not showing free space correctly, i.e. it virtually ends where it starts? 1MB in size. – Matt H Mar 23 '12 at 6:11
I initially extended it by 10GB not 1MB. Initially when I started windows it appeared to grow the C partition by 10GB instead of keep C at 60GB and extend free unpartitioned space by 10GB. That's why I ran check disk to start with because it's not what I would have expected would happen. – Matt H Mar 23 '12 at 6:14
Check Disk then shrank it back down to 60GB leaving 1MB free (although you see nothing free in windows disk management). – Matt H Mar 23 '12 at 6:16
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This question appears to be abandoned and unanswered. If this question no longer applies then you can either delete it or answer it yourself if you've solved the problem. Thanks! – Eric Carvalho Mar 19 at 1:33
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closed as too localized by Eric Carvalho, Eliah Kagan, Seth, Caesium, con-f-use Mar 28 at 17:27

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