This will will create vmdks for dd images from hard drives: You need access (linux) to the machine you created the dd from as you need to run: sfdisk -luS /dev/sdx to obtain the necessary information. The images created by this process are non-growable preallocated and thus take a lot of space without necessity to do so. With the *vmware-vdiskmanager* from vmware server (or ESX) you can create a growable disk. Run `vmware-vdiskmanager -r sdb.dd.vmdk -t 0 sdb.vmdk` After that the Disk still takes all the space. But now you can use the vmware-tools inside the vm to shrink it!