How to decrease Virtual Disk size?

N

Nathan Hall

Bit poster
I have a MBP with 100gb. I have reached my max disk capacity and have to quit the VM as I keep going below the minimum 500mb for it to operate. It's virtual disk size is 32gb. I only need like 12gb. How can I change this w/o losing my apps & data? I don't know if it's an expanding or 'plain' set-up either. I'd appreciate any help you wonderful people could provide.

Oh yea, I'm using parallels 3.0 build 5160.
 
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parallels version 4

Thanks Stuw for reply. I am using parallels version 4. version 5 was released just few months after I bought version 4...

The image tools compress did not reduce size at all, but within Parallels VM (windows XP), I tried to use parallels compressor and it worked.

It keeps making '..._restore' directory, though, which already contains like 700MB...

I would still like to know if I could reduce the default size for the expanding hard disk size.

Thank you very much!
 
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expanding disk default size

When see the default size of the expanding disk, it's 32GB.
It seems like I can only increase the size using Image Tools, but can't decrease the size.
It it possible to redefine maximum size of the expanding disk without reinstallation of parallels?
Thank you! -- jsk
 
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In Parallels Desktop 4 you are able to increase virtual disk capacity only (using Parallels tools). But in guest operating system you can reduce partition's size. In this case some part of virtual disk will be not used (in VM preferenes virtual disk capacity will not be changed).
 
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Tried everything in the forums but VM still bloated!

Hi,

I've tried everything I could find in these forums. I've compressed and re-compressed my VM and now it says it is 4.1 G, the problem is that in MAC it is taking up 24.83 G!!

I don't have any snapshots. I looked at "show package contents" of the winxp.hdd file and this is what it has in it:
-winxp.hdd.0.{5fbaabe3-6958-40ff-92a7-860e329aab41}.hds 23.43 G
-winxp.hdd 0KB
-DiskDescriptor.xml.Backup 4KB
-DiskDescriptor.xml 4KB

PLEASE help if you can. I am down to 300 MB on my 75G disk and I should not be there. There is a lot of space left, I just can't find it.

Thank you
 
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Hi Stuw,

thank you so much--

I copied what you wrote into terminal and this is what it said:
-lahR /full/path/to/vm.pvm
Last login: Tue Apr 21 15:50:27 on console
nicole-tunstalls-macbook:~ Nicole$ -lahR /full/path/to/vm.pvm
-bash: -lahR: command not found
nicole-tunstalls-macbook:~ Nicole$


I do have a file in My Documents called "Microsoft Windows XP.pvm" which contains the following (see attached screen grab).

This is separate from my Parallels file that has the 24.83 GB file "Windows.HDD." This .pvm file has a "Windows.HDD" file that is the same size as what the Guest OS thinks it is (4.18 GB).

Does this mean I can erase the Parallels folder with the huge file?

Thanks

Nicole
 

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after compressing in image tool, use compressor in the parallels desktop

Hi Nicole,

I hope your problem is solved by now.
After the compression step at the image tool, open the parallels desk top again (in my case it's windows xp).
Then in the parallels desktop you can use parallels compressor.
After the second compression in windows xp, the size did get shrink, and I could recover the disk space.

Good luck!
 
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Oops I missed the ls on the first try. Here is what the full command returns:

ls -lahR /full/path/to/vm.pvm
Last login: Tue Apr 21 15:50:27 on console
nicole-tunstalls-macbook:~ Nicole$ ls -lahR /full/path/to/vm.pvm
ls: /full/path/to/vm.pvm: No such file or directory
nicole-tunstalls-macbook:~ Nicole$
 
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Hi Jinyoungk,

I did try what you suggested, but it did not help. I still have 2 Windows hdd files--one 24.83GB and the other 4.18 GB. Only the 4.18 GB is the one I use. The other seems to be an extra file.
 
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Nicole Tunstall said:
Oops I missed the ls on the first try. Here is what the full command returns:

ls -lahR /full/path/to/vm.pvm
Last login: Tue Apr 21 15:50:27 on console
nicole-tunstalls-macbook:~ Nicole$ ls -lahR /full/path/to/vm.pvm
ls: /full/path/to/vm.pvm: No such file or directory
nicole-tunstalls-macbook:~ Nicole$
Click to expand...

/full/path/to/vm.pvm must be replaced to correct path of your VM bundle (for example "/Users/Shared/Parallels/Micorsoft Windows XP.pvm"). This command shows recursive result, but screenshot was enough in your case.


Nicole Tunstall said:
This is separate from my Parallels file that has the 24.83 GB file "Windows.HDD."
...
Does this mean I can erase the Parallels folder with the huge file?
Click to expand...
Before deleting, be sure that this file is not present in VM configuration and it is not a backup.
 
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Nicole Tunstall said:
Hi Stuw,

Thanks for your reply. Do you know where I can find how to do this? Replace the path?

Thank you again,

Nicole
Click to expand...

I don't need information about files within VM bundle any more.

p.s. About path: just type in terminal what you want. /full/path/to/vm.pvm is just sample path. I wrote it because I have no idea about real location of your VM :)
 
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Running latest Parallels 5 with Windows 7 on Mac 10.6.3. VM was 52GB and taking a while to load. I followed the steps recommanded by Stuw earlier and reduced its size to 18GB. Thanks!
 
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Any advice would be appreciated:
Compressor fails with the message that my disk is corrupt or I have snapshots. I have confirmed that neither are true.
This is for Parallels 5 (upgraded from 2,3,4 over the years) on Mac OSX 10.6 hosting WinXP.
The folder /documents/parallels/ shows only the file mosafer.pvm. No other files.
From within the guest OS the Compressor tool also generates the above message and the button to resize the disk is greyed out. If this can be resolve it will free up 40Gb for me.
Thanks
 
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Hello Stuw,

After 30 minutes the Parallels Image Tool, Processing the Disk, progress bar for Merging the snapshots has made zero progress. cpu stats show no work being done. If it's any help, the HDD was created under Parallels verison 2 and I've migrated through each version to get it to version 5. Under version 3 I used to have some snapshots, but deleted them in version 4.

Next steps?
 
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