How to free disk space on OS X Mountain Lion and Mavericks guests (10.8 & 10.9)

Hi all,

After fiddling around with this problem (look here as well) I finally found a workaround that freed some 50 GB disk space from my VMs. This is how I did it:

- In the hardware configuration section of my VMs add a new hard disk to the VM.
- After that run the appropriate VM.
- Download and install a disk cloning tool like SuperDuper! or Get Backup. The trial version will be fine and sufficient.
- Inside the VM run one of the tools and backup (clone) your complete original hard disk to the new one.
- When finished shut down the VM.
- In the configuration tools of Parallels delete the original HD and move it to the trash (leave it there for a while in case something goes wrong).

Now you have a noticeable smaller VM file that should run immediately without a problem (don't forget to empty the trash later to get rid of the old disk image).

There are some minor inconsistencies that I noticed: Some programs like MS Office loose their registration data which has to be re-entered. But that was all I found out until today. Maybe someone has an idea how to get this transferred, too.

I'd like to hear about your experience as well! Thank you all!