Virtual machine are cool to use even for a working desktop. Backup of the whole virtual machine and taking snapshot copies is easy. I have a virtual machine which runs Windows XP SP2. The original system disk size of 10 Gb is a bit limited. Several system updates, installation of MS 2007 Office Suite and other application software have out grown the allocated disk space.

The good thing about virtual machine is that you could change the memory size or the disk space if necessary. I used VMware virtualization software which comes with a tool vmware-vdiskmanager disk expansion software. I delved into increasing the virtual machine disk space, as everything looks straightforward and easy.

I made a backup copy of the virtual disk for insurance. Increasing the disk size was cool. No sweat, but it was not recognized by the system. There are instructions on how to use the extra partition to be part of the main system partition with disk expansion. I followed the outlined task. Surprise !!! Windows XP was unable to boot, screen turns blue and restarts the virtual machine automatically after a few seconds.

The good thing is I made a backup copy, before I DELETED the virtual disk (which is a really dumb thing to do). I copied back the virtual disk backup copy into the same location. Everything worked fine with Windows XP starting up, but the backup copy of the virtual disk seems to be old. I noticed, some latest installation and setup of important software are not there anymore.

The process which started with increasing virtual machines disk size ends up as disaster recovery problem. There’s no guarantee that everything will work fine when it comes to this kind of computer operation. So, I tried to recover the over written virtual disk file with the use of open source TestDisk Photo Recovery Software. I was not lucky with it. So, maybe I’ll try it with the use of commercial file recovery software like Active Undelete.