How do I increase the size of virtual disks in either VMware Workstation or VMware GSX Server?

Q: How do I increase the size of virtual disks in either VMware Workstation or VMware GSX Server?

A: By using Norton Ghost to increase the virtual disk size.

Solution

1. To increase the disk size of the virtual machine, you need to have Norton Ghost or a Norton Ghost bootable floppy disk or image and sufficient disk space. Here's how it's done:
   Power off the virtual machine.
   
2. Add a new HDD to the virtual machine with the new size that you need to expand to. (Note: the new HDD {Virtual device node - ide/scsi} type should be configured same as source HDD)
   
3. Create a Norton Ghost dos boot floppy, by clicking on: Ghost utilities > Norton ghost boot wizard > standard ghost boot disk
   
4. Power on the virtual machine and boot using the newly created ghost boot disk.
   
5. When the virtual machine boots and starts the Ghost application, select the Local disk-to-disk option.
   
6. Select the first drive (the existing smaller HDD) as the source disk and second drive (the newly added bigger HDD) as destination disk.
   
7. Ghost will now transfer your existing data to the new HDD that you have defined.
   
8. Power off the virtual machine when Ghost completes its process of copying, and remove the floppy disk from the floppy drive.
   
9. Now using the VMware Configuration Editor, remove the smaller HDD and power on the virtual machine.

The above steps can be used for increasing disk sizes of SCSI to SCSI and ide to ide HDD. Remember that your old smaller HDD disk file still exists in the host machine, and it may need to be deleted manually.