I use Virtual PC for all of my development. I have a VHD for each client, and this has saved me several times in the past. First, if my laptop ever crashes, I still have my VHDs. That means I just need an OS and Virtual PC, and I'm back up and running. Second, if clients use incompatible software, I'm safe. This happens quite often actually.

Anyway, a couple of my client VHDs have reached their size limit. My base VHD was built against Virtual PC 2004, and the drive limit was 16 GB. With Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 and SQL Server on it, some of them are running out of space.

I searched around a bit, and eventually found VHD Resizer. This allows you to take a VHD file, and change the size. You can also change it from a dynamic disk to a fixed size disk, or vise versa. It was a life saver for me, and allows me to continue using my VHDs without having to rebuild completely.

Tags: Virtual PC | VHD | Virtualization