Reduce Disk Size

Discussion in 'Installation and Configuration of Parallels Desktop' started by Ant, Feb 5, 2016.

  1. Ant

    Ant Bit poster

    Messages:
    2
    Hey evereyone,

    I have a Windows 8.1 on my mac and I am trying to reduce the image size from 64GB to something less. The problem is that when I edit the virtual machine and go into the hard disk settings, there is no option to reduce the size just to increase it.

    I searched all over the place and cannot find an answer on how to do it so would appreciate your feedback!

    Thanks,
    Ant
     
  2. Specimen

    Specimen Product Expert

    Messages:
    3,242
    You need not only to have the necessary free space on Windows, you probably need also to reduce its partition first, leaving the necessary 'unformatted space' for Parallels to reduce.

    Increasing a virtual disk is easy, but decreasing is not, as the Operating System will use the available space to store information as it sees fit, this often means the data is fragmented across the whole disk. So it needs to be defragmented first, allowing for free space at the end that can be removed by decreasing the partition size.
     
  3. Ant

    Ant Bit poster

    Messages:
    2
    Thanks. I already reduced partition through the machine and now there is unallocated free space of 27gb. I still cannot reduce the disk size though via the settings of parallels for the machine...
     
  4. IQmac

    IQmac Bit poster

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    5
  5. PaulChristopher@Parallels

    PaulChristopher@Parallels Product Expert Staff Member

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    3,158
    Hi Ant, Disk Management reports that you now have an extra partition on the hard drive that's marked as Unallocated. You can add that Unallocated partition manually to your main disk (C:) partition as suggested in this article.
     
  6. GregoryB3

    GregoryB3 Bit poster

    Messages:
    1
    I think it's time to get HTTP://kb.parallels.com/en/120250 updated... the PartitionWizard tool is amazing, but it's been updated so it doesn't boot CD any more, it simply requires restart. My C Drive was reduced from 156G down to 84G in a few seconds, and none of the configuration required. The link in 120250 is still valid, but instructions are very simple now... I then ran compress from the Parallels Configure Hard Disk menu after running the PartitionWizard and I'm now down to 27G VM Size!!! Amazing!
     
  7. PaulChristopher@Parallels

    PaulChristopher@Parallels Product Expert Staff Member

    Messages:
    3,158
    Hi @GregoryB3, thanks for sharing your suggestions. The Knowledge base article will update soon.
     

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