Disable Dangerous "Free Up Disk Space" message

Discussion in 'Installation and Configuration of Parallels Desktop' started by DavidA4, Feb 17, 2019.

  1. DavidA4

    DavidA4 Hunter

    Messages:
    165
    A while back, I had to reinstall my macOS after pressing the "Free Up Disk Space" offering.

    At this time I am receiving periodic messages from Parallels Desktop to free up disk space, I worry that I'll accidentally invoke the "Free Up Disk Space" routine. I want to be sure there is zero chance I'd accidentally click this option ever again.

    I need to disable this message (see attached screen capture). The damage inflicted by the Parallels Desktop "Free Up Disk Space" feature is so severe that I need to be absolutely sure that this process never runs again.

    Thanks,

    David
     

    Attached Files:

  2. Hi @DavidA4, Using Free Disk Space Wizard, you can compress the virtual machine hard disk(s) and remove various unnecessary files to free up disk space. It's very strange behavior of free up space option.
    You can just check this KB article for more info about this Parallels wizard https://kb.parallels.com/123553
    Except for that please use this post to disable Parallels Desktop notifications.
     
  3. RHS

    RHS Hunter

    Messages:
    101
    Yes indeed it is strange behavior. DavidA4 posted to my thread in the Installation and Configuration forum: "Mac host file system corruption during shrinking of PD13 Win10 VM". It's PD14 now. Upgrading did not help. Shrinking the VM on a Mac using APFS causes the shrinking process to run for several hours, and eventually hang up, causing corruption of the APFS file system as well as the VM file itself. I cannot shrink my VM now. I've had to restore my entire system from Time Machine 6 times now.
     
  4. diamondsoftware

    diamondsoftware Bit poster

    Messages:
    21
    Hi,
    there is a lot of other thread about this problem, but since now no answer from Parallels.
    As said in another thread, I think it 's a problem with the new Apple system format APFS, because if I copy a virtual machine on a old imac with HFS+ format, and do the remain, it works (and also fast remain). Also in APFS format i see that the size of remain place increase faster than before. There is definitely a bug in Parallels + APFS system.
     
  5. jacksonj1

    jacksonj1 Bit poster

    Messages:
    6
    Hello,
    If you have multiple drives, and the problem is not the system drive, a low space warning notification is not so important. You can disable a low disk warning by a system registry setting.
    The easy way is to download the TweakUI tool. After the downloading complete, Click on start menu and uncheck the box "Warn when low on disk space and now click exit from TweakUI. after that restart your computer and change your setting.
     
  6. Guys, once the issue reproduced, please generate the problem report and reply us back with the report ID.
     
  7. RHS

    RHS Hunter

    Messages:
    101
    Maria,
    I have no idea how to do that.
    Once the shrink fails, the Windows VM is corrupted and won't boot up.
    And the Mac file system is corrupted.
    The only evidence I can provide was what I pasted into my original post.
     
  8. MikeO6

    MikeO6 Bit poster

    Messages:
    4
    Had this once before and had to restore from a Time Machine backup.
    Foolishly did this again today in a rush and have an unfixable Mac HDD and a broken VM again. Back to Time Machine.
    Parallels need to fix this right now. This issue is too serious to tolerate.
     
  9. Guys, in order to fix it, we need more technical data - problem report
    Is it possible to generate it?
     
  10. MikeO6

    MikeO6 Bit poster

    Messages:
    4
    I sent one in today after my Mac got trashed.
     
  11. RHS

    RHS Hunter

    Messages:
    101
    MIke06 - I wanted to send in a tech report, but I was very hesitant to destroy my Mac on purpose just to generate one of these things. Thank you for taking one for the team!
     
  12. Thanks a lot for the report Mike, I've provided Parallels Engineering team with this info. Once we get any updates we will let you know. Thank you once again.
     
  13. Hi guys, please perform the following steps and provide us with the results:
    1. Check host disk / FS by DiskUtility (better from recovery mode)
    2. Execute the following command in Terminal (and reply us back with the command output)

    cp -vR <path to the virtual machine> /dev/null

    Looking forward to your reply.
     
  14. RHS

    RHS Hunter

    Messages:
    101
    Maria - 'cp' is a copy command. What am I copying? the output of the copy is to /dev/null. Won't this just make the source disappear? What is the purpose of this copy command?
     
  15. This command copies your vm file to nowhere, i.e. in dev \ null, and help us to check the ability of reading data without taking the disk space.
    If this command will produce an "Input/output error" it means that the pvm file is located on the hard disk bad blocks and the hard disk needs to be replaced eventually.
     
  16. RHS

    RHS Hunter

    Messages:
    101
    Maria - I ran disk utility and it took a while; it checked 23 snapshots but eventually returned OK; everything was fine. I keep getting usage errors trying this cp -vR command:
    usage: cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fi | -n] [-apvXc] source_file target_file

    cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fi | -n] [-apvXc] source_file ... target_directory
    Can you give me an example of how this command would look like?
     
  17. Please check below:
    cp -vR /Users/mgolubeva/Documents/Parallels/Windows\ 8\ EN\ 2018.pvm /dev/null
     
  18. RHS

    RHS Hunter

    Messages:
    101
    Hi Maria - it works now without the ">" output redirect. However, the name of my VM is "Windows 10.pvm"; it has a space in the name.
    The OS does not like that. It thinks I'm passing it 2 different files. Is there a way around this?
     
  19. MikeO6

    MikeO6 Bit poster

    Messages:
    4
    I just tried this on a different Mac to the one I had previously had the issue with. Same old. Mac freezes and needs a hard reboot. The VM is trashed and needed to be restored from a Time Machine backup.
    I have never experienced such a catastrophic error in software taking so long to get resolved.
     
    diamondsoftware likes this.
  20. diamondsoftware

    diamondsoftware Bit poster

    Messages:
    21
    True, it's a very dangerous issue... and corrections since months... :(((
     

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