I am running a Windows 7 VM in Parallels v10.4. I originally configured the VM to have a 100 GB expanding hard drive volume. A few weeks ago, Windows warned that I was running out of disk free space, so I reconfigured the volume to 150 GB. Last week, Windows Explorer reported that I had 22 GB of free space. This morning I had 16.7 GB free; this afternoon, it's down to 15.8 GB, without my having performed any actions in Windows other than simply leaving it open. If I add up everything in the folders visible in Windows Explorer, it comes to just under 50 GB, a figure that hasn't changed significantly in weeks. If I open the .pvm package in the Mac Finder and examine the disk volume, all file and folder contents sum up to just under 60 GB, again a figure that hasn't changed to any significant degree. The Parallels Control Center settings window currently reports a total size of 133.9 GB, with 133.7 GB in hard drives, 279 MB in miscellaneous, and nothing in snapshots or reclaimable. Unless there are some invisible files being written, it would seem that the volume information for the virtual hard drive is not being updated correctly. Ideas or suggestions?
Try running this inside the vm and see if it adds up. it will pull hidden files and such. Also take a look and see if there are any snapshots or recoverable space in parallels https://windirstat.info/
This turned out to be a Microsoft issue unrelated to Parallels. Apparently a corrupt CBS log file was causing Windows to generate a bunch of temporary cab files. At the time I deleted them, they were approaching 90 GB on disk.
