VMware : convert a growable to preallocated virtual disk

By | September 18, 2011

VMware allow four type of virtual disk (vmdk) :

0 : single growable virtual disk
1 : growable virtual disk split in 2Gb files
2 : single preallocated virtual disk
3 : preallocated virtual disk split in 2Gb files

vmware-vdiskmanager -r <source-disk> -t <type> <target-disk>

Now, if you want to convert your growable disk into preallocated disk, you may use the following command in a terminal :

vmware-vdiskmanager -r current_disk_name.vmdk -t 3 new_disk_name.vmdk