Virtual disk recovery [was: Virtualbox: expanding the size of a virtual disk]

[David Armour]

Good morning!
> On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 06:23:16PM -0700, Steven Davies-Morris wrote:
>   
>> I've been reading through the documentation but can't seem to find
>> anything in there that lets me tell it grow a VDI from 8gb to 16gb to
> <snip>
>   
> I've only just started using/trying VirtualBox but I'm pretty sure it
> told me as I was installing it that it grows the virtual disk as
> required, you don't have to tell it.
>
>   
Before upgrading to Hardy a couple of weeks back, I was using both 
Virtualbox and VMWare (server) to take a look at various distributions 
(LinuxMint, DreamLinux, Hardy-beta, etc.)

Since the up-grade, however, only VirtualBox shows up on the 
Applications/System Tools listing, and I initially read that Hardy was 
missing a couple of components [paraphrasing] that VMWare needed. Since 
then, I've found one way to (re-)install VMWare on Hardy: 

[http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2008/05/03/install-vmware-server-105-on-ubuntu-804-hardy/]

But because I definitely no longer need the space for the Hardy-beta 
trial, I still want that hard-drive space back! And since each virtual 
install typically allocates a default 8Gb, the potentially recoverable 
hard drive real estate remains non-trivial. A related issue involves 
recovery of allocated space for which I can no longer remember the 
passwords!

Googling variations of 'reclaim partition space vmware server ubuntu 
hardy' has come up mostly dry. Using a partition editor, e.g. GParted, 
makes my trepidation meter go crazy. And merely deleting .vmdk files 
*doesn't* seem to add space to the available remaining 82 of the 160Gb.

As always, any recommendations greatly appreciated.