Vmware workstation 12 shrink disk free download - Method 1: Shrink virtual machine disk size by Compacting disk

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Vmware workstation 12 shrink disk free download.Method 2: Shrink virtual machine disk size with Disk Cleanup

 

The file is currently 20 GB, but it is growing everyday, even though I'm not storing anything new in the guest file system. I have been looking for hours for a way to reduce the maximum size of this disk , so that it never gets to GB I'd like to set the limit to 30 GB, and see what happens when the VM reaches this size.

Although this task seems technically quite simple there is no tricky shrinking involved, just a simple change of size limit , I'm really out of ideas here Defragment the disk via the guest, choosing a defragmentation mode that consolidates empty space at the end of the disk.

For a Windows guest, you should empty the Recycle Bin and turn off hibernation and paging, returning them after the defragmentation is done. Zero all unused space on the disk. For Windows use sdelete : sdelete -c. Shrink the disk which may take quite a long time to complete. Or use : vmware-vdiskmanager. Converting the disk from growable to preallocated could stop its growing. This can be done using vmware-vdiskmanager with the -t parameter whose values are:.

If you wish to change the size of the disk, this should be done while the disk is still in growable format examples here. The file is currently 20GB, but it is growing everyday, even though I'm not storing anything new in the guest file system.

Because the OS and its application programs temporarily use lots of disk space for temporary files, page files, hibernate file and config files. Once they get deleted depending on the policy of the OS new sectors on disk are used at the next time.

The VM allocate storage for the virtual disk from real disk whenever a new sector is used in the virtual disk. As the sector on virtual disk are always not reused by guest OS the VM thinks its a disk usage and give space from real disk and this will lead to growing virtual disk image.

Your question title is less likely to be solved as using such a tool without inspection of image may lead to total disaster. But you can prevent growing of the image beyond 30GB. There are many way to achieve the goal. Use only 30GB partitioned and leave remaining as free space. As the space in unpartitioned area is never used virtual disk will never grow beyond 30GB. Create a snapshot and restore to it after usage. After creating snapshot VM store data into a new image file. If you restore to it, without saving or making new snapshots, all changed data is deleted and thus space is freed.

Create a new virtual disk of maximum 30GB, add it as a new disk into your current virtual machine, move all data to the new virtual disk using a backup tool. You may use a live Linux for the cloning. The answer of harrym is pretty good, but it actually does not answer the question. The OP wants to reduce the maximum size. The problem is the hypervisor does not know how much of the presented size aka maximum size is indeed used by the OS.

The compaction vmware-vdiskmakager -k applies to a growable vmdk. It does nothing on preallocated one's. The first step involves a procedure from within the VM and varies with guest OS. The second step could be supported by the vmware commands but I haven't found a profound way of doing so. Thus the hacky approach.

Here is a non so quick due to large data moving involved and dirty solution that did the trick. We will need to have available space equal to the maximum device size. Find a way to resize the guest partition and leave unallocated space at the end of the device.

Two examples:. Make sure you add at least this number to the disk size. Now we need convert the bytes to sectors dividing by and rounding upwards ceiling. Note this number for step 3. As the hack works on single file preallocated type 2 vmdks haven't tried on multiple file types we first convert the growable to preallocated. We will temporarily need a partition with physical space as the maximum size of the device.

Open the first disk. Find the line. Yes you get the point, the second field is the number of sectors allocated for the device. This should be the previous device's size. Now replace that number with the noted number from step one and save the file. But we resized the fs on the beginning of the device and made correct and safe calculations right?

Until now no data have been touched yet. Do this final step to actually trim the extends. We will use the rename functionality of vmware-vdiskmanager to recreate the vmdk with it's size now trimmed. You'll have to set the sum of all partitions to be less than 30GB. You'll have to shrink the sizes of the partitions down as you go. Why did you create a GB thin partition if you did not have the space to support it at maximum size?

Seems like this is just asking for trouble. Detailed steps here. Note that any changes to the VMDK size will also need a corresponding update to the partition table. In a Windows virtual machine, you must first run a disk defragment from within Windows. Defragmenting within Windows ensures that all of the used spaces are contiguous. You can then reduce the size of the virtual disk.

Note: In Workstation 9. Therefore, this option is removed from VMware Tools Panel. This is not available in Linux version of VMware Workstation 9. Click the Shrink tab. Select the drive you want to shrink. Click Prepare to Shrink, then follow the onscreen instructions.

Caution: Do not shut down your virtual machine or the host machine while the disk is shrinking. Also, do not try to cancel the process. Interrupting this process can cause irreparable damage to your virtual disk and you may not be able to start your virtual machine again.

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Start collaborating and sharing organizational knowledge. Create a free Team Why Teams? Learn more about Teams. It is also very helpful to shrink the size of virtual machine disk in VMware Workstation. The following steps will guide you through this operation.

Step 3 : On the popup window, click Clean up now button to start cleaning up. Step 4 : Wait for a while until a popup window prompts that Disk cleanup is finished. Then click OK button to close the window. After this operation, the size of. In the end, you can also shrink virtual machine disk size by third-party tool.

Actually, the more files in virtual machine, the more space the virtual machine disk occupies. So, cleaning up the junk files in the virtual machine can effectively reduce the space occupied by the virtual hard disk. For more convenience, you can install a cleanup tool in the virtual machine and use it to remove the useless files from virtual machine. Here I recommend a cleanup tool named iSunshare System Genius that designed to clean up the junk files and the registry to free up disk space with one click.

Here are detailed steps to use it to free up virtual machine disk. Step 1 : Open the virtual machine in VMware Workstation and download and install this tool on your virtual machine.

Then launch it. Step 2 : Click Scan button to scan and the virtual machine thoroughly. Step 3 : Wait for a while until scanning is completed and the scan results will be shown on the screen, listing all kinds of useless files on your computer. Then click Clean button to clean up all the selected files in one go. Step 4 : Once completed, click OK button to exit.

Ultimately, the virtual machine has freed up a lot of space and the size of virtual disk has been shrunken successfully. Tips : In addition, iSunshare System Genius is a multi-functional Windows optimization utility that can help you free up system disk space with one click, disable the auto-run programs and manage Windows system services, etc.

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