How to restore 10.12.x in VMware Fusion 10 using 10.13.2?

[nadia p.]

I need to be able to restore a Time Machine backup of 10.12.x and 10.11.x so I can review the entire drive's data. I'd prefer to be able to do this using VMware Fusion 10 Pro to make things easier than having to do this to a hard disk or SSD drive.

Current setup: 10.13.2 (High Sierra) on a MacBook Pro. Installed in that environment is VMware Fusion 10 Pro. I've attempted to create a new virtual machine for 10.12.x and restore a Time Machine backup into it. In doing so I receive an error message showing me that the virtual machine "disk" is too small. It lists it's size at 46.xx GB however the virtual machine vmdisk that was created was 1.0 TB. No matter what I try I can't seem to get around this error which prevents anything else from proceeding forward.

Has anyone else attempted to do something like this and if so how were you able to do this successfully?

Note: I've even attempted this from 10.12.x and 10.11.x using VMware Fusion 10 or 8.5, so far I've been unable to find a solution. If there's some other virtual machine software that works I'll try that.

Edit 01: This is so frustrating. Is there something in 10.13.x that prevents this due to the updated database/data structure changes?

 

[nadia p.]

I finally tracked down the solution...

Pros: Gotta hand it to Apple for NOT stripping Terminal out of macOS and actually enhancing it's commands over the years.

Cons: We have to resort to this and several hours of finding solutions that should be part of macOS and/or VMware Fusion.

https://themacwrangler.wordpress.com/2015/10/21/resizing-el-capitan-mac-volumes-under-vmware-fusion/
This person really helps explain it well and their work around is quite easy for most people to follow. The hard part about all of this is first discovering why macOS and Fusion don't work as expected. We know what we need to do but each software doesn't provide the means through a graphical user interface. Software should make our lives easier not complicate them.

In case the link (above) no longer works, the trick is open Terminal (within VMware's macOS) and enter:

sudo diskutil resizeVolume / R

This will take care of resizing the vmdk to match macOS automatically.