Free Up Space - Archive needs better warning and cancel button

I clicked free up space. Then saw the archive button and since it had no explanation I assumed it would take me to another page explaining its function.

Instead it started archiving my VM which took 5 hours and there was no way to cancel.

I think a better pre-emptive warning would be great (This may take hours and you can't cancel the process)

 

Seriously needed. It is beyond ridiculous to have an Archiving option with zero warning that it will take hours, cannot be cancelled, and you will not have the use of your VM until it's done.

It's especially crazy to have this "option" right next to Reclaim Disk Space option as it's easy to inadvertently click on Archive because the latter mentions freeing up disk space.

 

I fell into this trap too.

I've got a Legacy VM which is 480GB (I know - time to slim down). I've had no end of problems with it making the Mac run hot, sometimes getting stuck in a rebooting loop.

So yeah, time to move on.... I've been creating a new "fresh" Windows 10 VM which is working great. Nice and speedy. I'm not quite ready to bin the old one yet as I'm not 100% sure that I've got everything I need off it yet.

So I started looking into reclaiming disk space and saw the Archive button. Clicked it innocently as it promised me 280Gb of space back. I had no idea the trap it was luring me back into, (Mac running hot again, the new VM doesn't perform at all well because this ARCHIVING PROCESS WHICH I CAN'T STOP has been running for 12 hours.

I've got deliverables today, and I can barely work on my laptop. If I force a shutdown it may leave the legacy VM in a broken / corrupted state. So I guess I'm stuck with a dead laptop for (what could be) days.

Parallels, PLEASE get your functionality under control, and stop cannibalising the host OS / Computer of its resources. I'm about ready to quit.

 

100% this

 

Thank you a lot for bringing it up. We'll work on it.

 

Same problem for me now :-( I'm stuck and can't work for hours
This archive option is unexplained!!!!!

If you know, how I can cancel the process, please tell me!