Parallels file taking 26GB disk space! Help...

Hi,

I am on a Macbook Air 2011 using Parallels 7 with Windows 7.

The following file is using 26 GB of disk space:

users / me / documents / parallels / Windows 7.pvm/

This cannot be normal, can it? How can I fix this?

I only have 3 programs installed on my Windows VM - firefox, AVG virus scan, and an astrology chart generating program.

Thanks for any insight/assistance you can offer.

 

Boot your VM and see how much space is actually being used (My Computer, Local Disk C:, properties, etc) according to Windows.

 

VM Windows says drive C: used space is 21.8 gb and free space is 42.1 gb.

This info bears no resemblance to what Mac systems info is telling. There, I am seeing that 27 gb of my hard drive is free.

Any insight? None of the program or document files on the VM account for the gb being "used." Are they just in reserve? Can I set a much lower disk quote in Windows?

Thanks.

 

26 GB is a normal size of virtual machine. moreover it is not actually very big VM (some users have VMs of 100-200GB size).
26 GB is not only your applications and files stored in Windows - it is all Windows Operating System with all system files.
pvm file contains the operating system itself, applications and other data - so 26 GB is expected and "normal" size.
The difference between Disk C size shown in My Computer and pvm file size means you have an expanding virtual disk. It can store up to 64 GB of data but pvm file would be increased only after you add (download, install) any data to you Windows VM. Yet additional space is not used - it is not occupied at the Mac hard drive either.

 

Don't believe that moron — you CAN significantly decrease disk space used by Parallels. Here is the manual:

1. Open Parallels desktop
2. Click on "Configure" button
3. Open "Hardware" tab
4. Pick Hard Disk in the list
5. Push "Compress" button

I've just decreased my PVM file from 27GB to 14GB.

 

The pvm contains a virtual disk, the size of how it appears to Windows, is controlled by the disk size setting in Parallels VM configuration, the free space plus used space give a size of 64 GB, even thou on this computer the virtual disk could never use all those 64 GB as it's limited by the hardware. So that to explain the divergence between free spaces.

As the virtual expanding disk is used and there's some fragmentation as you install/uninstall programs, create, delete files, so the Virtual disk file ends up taking more space than the actual used space inside the VM, this discrepancy is natural, in your case is 4-5 GB, as the previous user said, the way to reclaim some of this 'elastic' space is to use the 'Compress'. This will, at best, reduce 4 to 5 GB on your VM, it won't make 14 GB in your case since the VM is actually using 22 GB.

If you really want to reduce it further you'll have to reduce the eliminate some files on the Windows side, first I would reduce the size of the virtual hd from 64 to 32 GB, since some apps and services use space based on a percentage of the total disk size, this is true for Windows Restore/Recovery, Recycle Bin and Browser's Cache among others. Secondly, you might want to purge the cache of your browsers (IE and Firefox). You also might use a program such as CCleaner to get rid of temp files.
Also there is a file called pagefile.sys in Windows that is the size of the current RAM allocated to the VM, this is a necessary file, and if you delete it it will be recreated again, but if you have 2 GB of RAM assigned to the VM, you'll have a 2 GB file added to all other files, and if you have hibernation enabled (you shouldn't/don't need on a VM) it's another 2 GB file always there, this to explain how Windows gets to consume a lot of space, via mostly temp files, and caches.
Finally defragment the virtual drive on Windows, this will make the compression more efficient, then 'Compress'.

Note: I agree the Parallels Staff members should be more helpful/knowledgeable, it's a glaring omission YanaYana didn't mention Compress.

 

PD will offer to compress the virtual disk at certain point, if person has 22 gb taken on the C drive and the VM is 26 overall - it might be the case that there is nothing to compress - or maybe 1-2 GBs