help, installed VMware fusion and some software is telling me to partition larger

[ddwisema]

Help! I have a Mac mini that I installed VMware Fusion 3.0 and Windows 7 so I could load a graphics program called Creative Memories. There are several programs I need to load. I loaded the vm ware and windows program, with no problems. Then I loaded the Creative Memories Memory Manager 3.0. This loaded, but when I went to load the Story Book Creator, it told me I did not have enough disk space. I see that I have 30 GB of space for this VMware fusion, and I have tons of space left over after I loaded 3 of the four programs above(27 of the 30 gb is available). I still have another couple of programs to load, of which are, Story Book Creator plus 3.0, disk 1 and 2 (needs 2 gb ram and 2 gb hard drive).

My question is, can I partition a larger chunk of hard drive space to VMware so I can access these programs WITHOUT ruining my previously loaded files/programs that I already have on my mac mini? Secondly, How much space should I designate, and will I have to reload my windows 7 and other programs on this virtual machine? And thirdly, if I ever install Microsoft office on this virtual machine, how much space will that take up, if I only have 30 GB partitioned?

 

[CylonGlitch]

... snip

I believe VMWare comes with an application that can resize the partition of virtual drives (assuming you are not running off a bootcamp partition). This should work for you to expand it as needed. Office is a bit of a pig, I'm guessing another 2 to 4gb for it. I would allocate 100gb for the virtual drive, and then tell VMWare to expand it as necessary. This way you'll have room to grow and you'll only use up as much as you actually need (not preallocated).