2
Moved here from StackOverflow
I made my VirtualBox (4.3.0) Ubuntu VM (on Win 7 host) too small. I have the choice of enlarging the virtual disk (all I read makes that sound dangerous and complicated) or to add a second "drive" (which sounds easier). I chose the second drive.
I shut down and cloned my VM. On the clone VM I went to the storage setting and added another, much larger, SATA drive (350 GiB). I set it to dynamically allocate space.
I booted up the VM and used ffdisk to make a partition table (primary partition using the whole drive). Seemed to work and fdisk /dev/sdb, p command says:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 734003199 734003199 0+ 83 Linux
Now to put a filesystem on the disk. I issue the command:
sudo mkfs.ext4 -L /data /dev/sdb1
and get the message
mke2fs 1.42 (29-Nov-2011)
mkfs.ext4: Device size reported to be zero. Invalid partition specified, or
partition table wasn't reread after running fdisk, due to
a modified partition being busy and in use. You may need to reboot
to re-read your partition table.
Rebooting did not fix the problem.
The description of the second drive from the VBox Manager reads:
Type: normal (VDI)
Virtual Size: 350.00 GB
Actual Size: 3.00 MB
Details: Dynamically allocated st...
Can someone advise me on how to approach this problem? Google nor StackOverflow have yielded any useful answers.
Wes Miller
Posted 2013-11-11T13:20:37.517
Reputation: 233
2Looks like you're going hardcore with the low-level commands. In the Ubuntu VM, why not use 'gparted' to create and initialize your new HD – rickhg12hs – 2013-11-11T13:33:08.487
3
The partition you created is 0 blocks long. Remove it and create a proper new partition. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InstallingANewHardDrive
– Der Hochstapler – 2013-11-11T14:03:37.260Thanks to both of you. It was 0 bytes long and gparted was a big help. Problem fixed. – Wes Miller – 2013-11-11T20:10:37.123