August 19, 20169 yr Hey Guys, I followed the Windows 10 VM installation guide video on youtube a while back to install my W10 VM on unraid. On the video, it was explained that when you create the drive you have to set allocate the size of the drive you want (here: ). At the time, i set it to 120gb, however i am now needing to extend this a bit further. The Cache Only user share created for this, has plenty more space available. How would i go about this? Say i want to upgrade the allocated disk size from 120gb -> 200gb? Cheers.
August 19, 20169 yr Community Expert With the the VM stopped click on the its name (not the icon) and it will show the disk(s) assigned, you can change the allocated size there, you then also have to expand it using disk Management in windows. Edit: This is for v6.2, I never used VMs on v6.1 so not sure if it's the same but assume so.
August 19, 20169 yr Author Im on 6.1.x, ill give it a try though. you then also have to expand it using disk Management in windows. Could you please explain how i go about doing this part? Havent done it before, so unsure where this option is. Cheers.
August 19, 20169 yr Community Expert http://support.wdc.com/KnowledgeBase/answer.aspx?ID=1284 Then right click the partition and choose expand.
August 19, 20169 yr Author http://support.wdc.com/KnowledgeBase/answer.aspx?ID=1284 Then right click the partition and choose expand. Oh thats easy. I will give that a go tomorrow morning (VM is copying some stuff at the moment, shouldnt get in its way). I have another scenario/question that is unrelated to the OP (well sort of). Could you give me some insight as well? Ill post a new thread if i dont get anything here So Scenario: say your cache drive is 200GB, you create a usershare (cache only) for your new VM, allocate 100GB to the VM drive. Say your VM only uses 10GB of the 100gb allocated, and nothing else is only cache just yet. The Unraid Main page will show your cache drive as "100GB Used / 100GB Free", although you are essentially only using 10GB (im assuming this is correct?). Lets also say you have a usershare called "Media" that is cache enabled. You then copy 50 GB to this Media user share. Obviously the files will first get saved to the cache drive, so your cache section on the unraid Main page will say 150GB used / 50GB free. Now, what would happen if i copy another 100GB to this Media user share? Lets assume the "mover" is not running (all this happens between mover cycles). Would unraid allow this new 100GB to also get copied into the cache drive, although on the main page it says only 50GB free (but technically you have 50 + 90 GB free since the VM is only using 10GB)? If Yes (which i believe is the case), what would prevent unraid from filling out the entire cache drive (even the space that is allocated to the VM), thus causing the VM to go crazy since it thinks theres free space but there is none.
August 19, 20169 yr Community Expert Vdisks are thin provisioned, i.e., they only occupy what they really need, this is reflected on the cache free space, so free space reported is the actual free space available, if you exceed that when copying to a user share (with cache enable), it will start writing to the array when the cache min free space setting is reached.
August 19, 20169 yr Author Vdisks are thin provisioned, i.e., they only occupy what they really need, this is reflected on the cache free space, so free space reported is the actual free space available, if you exceed that when copying to a user share (with cache enable), it will start writing to the array when the cache min free space setting is reached. Ah awesome. So, in the above setup (200gb cache drive, 100gb allocated to cache only VM share/drive, and media share with cache enabled), if i set the Cache min free space to say 10GB, and if my VM is using 50GB and i try to copy 200Gb worth of stuff to my media share, 1st 140gb will be saved on cache and rest of 60gb would go directly to the array bypassing cache. Correct? At this point (we have 10gb free on cache drive), you have 140GB on cache from the media share, and 50GB from the Windows VM (remember this drive is cache only), what if you add another 5GB from within the VM? Does that mean cache drive goes upto 195GB? What of you add another 10-20gb from within the VM, what would happen then (because windows will still think that there is 45gb free, but in reality only 5gb is available)?
August 19, 20169 yr Community Expert So, in the above setup (200gb cache drive, 100gb allocated to cache only VM share/drive, and media share with cache enabled), if i set the Cache min free space to say 10GB, and if my VM is using 50GB and i try to copy 200Gb worth of stuff to my media share, 1st 140gb will be saved on cache and rest of 60gb would go directly to the array bypassing cache. Correct? Yes At this point (we have 10gb free on cache drive), you have 140GB on cache from the media share, and 50GB from the Windows VM (remember this drive is cache only), what if you add another 5GB from within the VM? Does that mean cache drive goes upto 195GB? Yes What of you add another 10-20gb from within the VM, what would happen then (because windows will still think that there is 45gb free, but in reality only 5gb is available)? Good question, never tried that, maybe someone else knows, but not a good idea to over-provision vdisks.
August 19, 20169 yr Author Good question, never tried that, maybe someone else knows, but not a good idea to over-provision vdisks. Yes, but sometimes you cant really help it though? Some software within the VM could be doing strange things (ie. plex encoding stuff and using up crazy amount of hdd space till files are synced to devices). Im facing this right now, which is really annoying
August 19, 20169 yr Community Expert Set the cache minimum free space to a value that allows for the vddisk maximum size, or use a separate SSD for VMs (with the unassigned devices plugin).
August 19, 20169 yr Author Set the cache minimum free space to a value that allows for the vddisk maximum size, or use a separate SSD for VMs (with the unassigned devices plugin). Yeah, guess that's the best approach, installing the vms in a seperate SSD. i was considering that.
August 19, 20169 yr Author With the the VM stopped click on the its name (not the icon) and it will show the disk(s) assigned, you can change the allocated size there, you then also have to expand it using disk Management in windows. Edit: This is for v6.2, I never used VMs on v6.1 so not sure if it's the same but assume so. So, i tried to do the above steps, but got stuck on step 1. I dont see the allocated size on the VM screen. Here is a picture: http://i.imgur.com/SsWz344.jpg Any other ideas? Its the primary disk i want to expand, currently set to 120gb, and i want to make it 200-ish.
August 19, 20169 yr Author Actually, maybe i should add, my cache disk got corrupted file system once, so i had to recover the vdisk image file out of it, redo the cache, then move the vdisk file back into the new cache disk's share, then create a new VM and point the primary and secondary disks to the corresponding vdisk files. So, maybe because i did that, i probably need to expand the vdisks manually somehow?
August 19, 20169 yr Author With the the VM stopped click on the its name (not the icon)... Oh, Herp Derp! That fixed it, perfect I also tried to set the min free cache size to 20GB, is this correct: 20000000000? (i pretty copied the 1gb number provided on the help section and changed the 1 into a 20). Because after doing that, my Fix common problems plugin started complaining saying the following: Cache Floor Size (calculated to 20480000000000 bytes) is larger than your cache drive (250059317248 bytes)
August 19, 20169 yr With the the VM stopped click on the its name (not the icon)... Oh, Herp Derp! That fixed it, perfect I also tried to set the min free cache size to 20GB, is this correct: 20000000000? (i pretty copied the 1gb number provided on the help section and changed the 1 into a 20). Because after doing that, my Fix common problems plugin started complaining saying the following: Cache Floor Size (calculated to 20480000000000 bytes) is larger than your cache drive (250059317248 bytes) Cache floor size when set without any suffix is assumed to be KB (Press Help on the screen) Just set it to 20GB
August 20, 20169 yr Author Cache floor size when set without any suffix is assumed to be KB (Press Help on the screen) Just set it to 20GB Ah, i interpreted the help on that field incorrectly. To be fair, it could use some better/clear wording so people would understand better. What you said above makes perfect sense, thanks a lot
April 3, 20179 yr On 8/19/2016 at 10:27 AM, johnnie.black said: With the the VM stopped click on the its name (not the icon) and it will show the disk(s) assigned, you can change the allocated size there, you then also have to expand it using disk Management in windows. Edit: This is for v6.2, I never used VMs on v6.1 so not sure if it's the same but assume so. @johnnie.black Great instructions, appreciated.
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