Can't resize hard disk (Parallels 5)

B

Blake Sobiloff

Bit poster
Hi all,

My guest OS (Win7RC) is running out of room on its hard disk, so I need to expand Hard Disk 1. However, whenever I try to do so I get a error message "Unable to resize the disk because it has one or more snapshots." I've already deleted all my snapshots, so I'm not sure where to go from here.

I've renamed the "Snapshots" folder to "Snapshots-old" to make sure that there wasn't any cruft causing problems there, but no luck. I also checked the Snapshots.xml file, but all it has in it is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ParallelsSavedStates xmlns:xsi="" vm_uuid="" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="" />

Any suggestions? TIA!
 
A fix that works under Parallels 6

NOTE: This will only work if you have enough free space on the host disk to duplicate the *actual* size of the ailing VM (go into the VM and find its reported disk size).

In my test case, I had a 32gb Windows XP VM (which was full, and needed to be sized up) running under Parallels 6. This VM had been upgraded continually since Parallels 3. The .pvm file for this "32gb" vm was consuming over 100gb of disk space on the host disk. There were lots of extra ".hds" files in the disk image but deleting any of them would kill the image. It could not be resized due to the "snapshots exist" error (of course, there weren't any snapshots).

The copy process below required 32gb free space to create a new virtual machine, after which I deleted the old one and recovered 100gb space. On a mid-2010 MBP with i7 and Snow Leopard this process took about two hours to fully complete.

In Parallels 6:

1) Launch the VM that you want to refresh, and make sure its network settings are configured to "shared" and it can see the 'net. Download the version-appropriate Parallels Transporter to it (from the Parallels website).

2) In the VM, install Parallels Transporter and allow it to reboot if it wants to. Transporter will start up automatically. Don't close it. You shouldn't need to do anything else to it.

3) In Parallels on the Mac side, launch File|Import...

4) Follow the normal import procedure on the Mac side, using "network" transfer method. Make sure to select the configuration settings you prefer such as shared filesystem settings, Coherence settings, etc. These will not copy over from the old VM!

Parallels Import will auto-detect the Transporter running in your old VM over the shared network connection. It may ask for a name and password (this should be an admin-level account in the old VM). It should then display the old VM's IP number, you can verify it by looking at the Parallels Transporter window in the old VM. Select this and proceed to build a new VM from the old one. When asked for a VM name, pick something different from the one you are importing from.

The new VM will be your existing Guest OS image, but brand-new "underneath"...it will be the correct footprint size and the corruption that causes the "cannot resize because snapshots exist" error will not copy over. The bloat-causing "extra junk" also stays behind.

If you're using one of the Windows "Home" editions or something else that requires activation, you might have to re-activate it in the new VM. Road test the new copy thoroughly before trashing the old one!!
 
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