Can I reduce the size of a Windows 11 VM?

[SWANDY]

As the title says, when I created my Windows 11 VM (on my M1 iMac) I made it too large for my eventual use. I have about 150 GB of "free space" on my Local Drive C. Is there anyway - without completely rebuilding the VM and starting from scratch - to get back some of this space? The option in Parallels to "reclaim disk space" only reclaimed 1.8 GB. Never considered doing this before so not sure if there is a thread on this. Couldnt find anything in the Parallels Knowledge Base articles when I searched.
Thanks.

 

[AzinS]

yes you can do it. Shut down the VM, then in hardware section > hard disk > advanced > properties > and here you can decrease the hard drive size. (you need to delete snapshots to be able to change the hard disk size)
Since you can not have a snapshot/backup for resizing, then you could lose data. So you can "clone" the VM and test this workflow on the clone first.
how to clone a vm: in Control Center > right click on gear > clone

 

[Mikhail Ushakov]

As the title says, when I created my Windows 11 VM (on my M1 iMac) I made it too large for my eventual use. I have about 150 GB of "free space" on my Local Drive C. Is there anyway - without completely rebuilding the VM and starting from scratch - to get back some of this space? The option in Parallels to "reclaim disk space" only reclaimed 1.8 GB. Never considered doing this before so not sure if there is a thread on this. Couldnt find anything in the Parallels Knowledge Base articles when I searched.
Thanks.

Hello,
Please note that by default, your virtual hard drive is an 'expanding' one. Even if its size is 250GB it doesn't mean it takes 250 GB of Mac disk space - it'll take the amount of space it actually takes based on the files you keep inside the virtual machine: https://kb.parallels.com/en/4706 .
I'd advise you to follow the steps from KB https://kb.parallels.com/123553 .

 

[SWANDY]

Hello,
Please note that by default, your virtual hard drive is an 'expanding' one. Even if its size is 250GB it doesn't mean it takes 250 GB of Mac disk space - it'll take the amount of space it actually takes based on the files you keep inside the virtual machine: https://kb.parallels.com/en/4706 .
I'd advise you to follow the steps from KB https://kb.parallels.com/123553 .

That is what I thought I remember reading at one time. Because the VM file that I backup using Carbon Copy Cloner is only about 105GB. The 250GB is what I see as a total in Windows Explorer. Thanks for explaining.