How to increase VirtualBox disk size in 5 minutes?

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A few days ago, I realized that my VirtualBox instance's hard drive was almost full. I looked at the UI of VirtualBox management console but I could not find an easy way to expand the size of the hard disk. After a quick Google search, I found out that you can increase the size of the hard drive of your virtual pc with a console command.

Step 1. 

Turn off your virtual pc. Make sure you copy your .vmi file somewhere else for backup just in case.

Step 2.

Go to your console/terminal and run the following command.
> VBoxManage modifyhd --resize

For instance, in order to expand your .vmi to 128GB,  use the following.
> VBoxManage modifyhd "/Volumes/Dev Ext/VirtualBox VMs/windows/windows.vdi" --resize 128000

Step 3.

First step completes pretty fast but your virtual windows pc will not be able to see the extended hard drive as primary drive (in most cases C:\).  Therefore, you need to open "Computer Management > Disk Management" and then extend your drive by right clicking on your primary drive (in my case it is C:\) and clicking on "Extend Volume...". Following screenshot displays the UI after successful extension.




Voila! In less than 5 minutes, you have increased your hard drive of your VirtualBox instance! Use this method at your own risk and enjoy...



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