How to resize a disk in VirtualBox (ubuntu host/windows XP guest)

I have Virtual Box 3.2.12 installed on ubuntu 10.10. I have several guest OSes, and one of them is a Windows XP installed on a 8 GB virtual hard disk. This size has become too small and I want to resize it (I created dinamically but I need now more space than it’s 8GB).

This are the steps to resize it. I’ll try to make a complete guide with screenshots to be as clear as possible:

• Create a new virtual disk (dinamically expanding storage). In my case 20GB would be ok.
• Set your windows virtual machine to have the new disk image as it’s second hard disk (Settings -> Storage)

• Get a bootable linux CD and boot the virtual machine from the CD

• Open GParted
• Select the first partition (the one which has data): /dev/sda1

• Select Partition -> Copy

• Select the second disk (/dev/sdb) that still is unformatted, and click to select the unallocated partition.
• Select Partition -> Paste and this dialog appears. Choose Advanced to create an msdos partition table:

• This seems to do nothing, but it creates the partition table to the new disk. So  repeat the copy-paste and you’ll get this dialog:

• Resize the size slider to its maximum size and click Paste.
• Apply the pending operations:

• When all operations are completed this dialog appears:

• Assign the boot flag to this new partition (/dev/sdb1): Partition -> Manage flags:

• Exit GParted and poweroff the VM
• Go to Settings -> Storage again and remove the old (smaller) disk (right click on the disk)

• Assign the big disk to the IDE Primary Master (right pane)

• Power on the VM, a checkdisk is performed because of the new disk assignment, and finally you have the new disk on your Windows guest machine.

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