How to decrease Virtual Disk size?

Hello Stuw,
The long delay in any update to the status bar mislead me. The consolidation worked perfectly after a while and even resulted in the compression I was seeking. Many thanks for your assistance, and offer of further assistance.
Case closed :-)
- Michael
 
I have the same problem and I call customer service and paid $20 to have them tell me it's not possible because I have an OEM version of Windows on my migrated disk. Any suggestions?
 
Hi, TCM25601

What version of Parallels do you use?
Please write here what are you trying to do step by step and what happens wrong?
 
I am trying to free up hard disk space from a virtual disk for the Mac side of my MacBook Pro, OS X 10.5.8, and 2.2 GHz. I have 53 Gigs available on a virtual PC hard disk out of 80 Gigs that seems to be partitioned for it, it’s in expanded mode. I migrated this disk from a Dell Latitude D810, T750@ 2.20GHz, 1.18 GB RAM, Windows XP version 2002 Service Pack 3.

I tried to use Parallels Image Tool on the Mac side to compact the disk and it goes through the process of compacting it but nothing happens to the virtual disk size. Then when I run the compressor software from within the PC virtual machine it gets partway through the process and it freezes. It goes through the first step, where you have to restart the virtual machine then it gets stuck 3/4 through the second step where it says something to the effect of Parallels is preparing to compact. I have left it in this state for over 12 hours and no change.

I paid $20 for Parallels customer service and they took remote control of my computer to make sure I did not have any snap shots or anything else for that matter effecting the compact process. They ran the Image Tools again from the Mac side and still no changer to the virtual disk size. Then I asked if they could just remove the virtual drive to a external drive and they tried to copy and paste the virtual disk to an external hard disk and that did not work.

Then they said since my virtual disk was migrated from an OEM computer that it will not work and there is nothing they can do. They said Parallels was not designed to work with migrated OEM systems. The Windows software I have on the OEM machine is original and genuine Microsoft software and it is registered with Microsoft. So I don't understand how that could be the problem. I have to either compact the virtual disk and free up that hard disk space or I have to remove the parallels software. Please let me know what do to.
 
Thanks for your report.
Please create a problem report and tell me it's number. I'll try to analyze log files.
 
Parallels Compressor (in Parallels Desktop 4) fills disk with zeros (it creates special empty files in user folder). It is long operation. During this operation windows could show message about problem with virtual memory (low virtual memory).

1. Please, check C:\Documents and Settings\<username> folder (when compressor software within guest os will be "frozen"). Are there files PrlsCmps0.dat, PrlsCmps1.dat etc.? (NOTE: at the end of work Parallels Compressor removes this files).
2. What filesystem is used within guest OS?
3. How many free space on you virtual disk?
4. Have you got a ticket number (from support team)?

In any case compacting is much better in Parallels Desktop 5. Did you try demo version of Parallels Desktop 5?
 
Last edited:
1.Yes the files are there
2. I have no idea, how do I find that out?
3. 53 Gigs
4 ticket #923295 is what I was given when they worked on my computer

no I have not upgraded to 5.0
 
Hi,

Is there a summary somewhere of how to reduce the virtual disk size? I've read various threads including this one and tried the compressor, to no effect.

I have a macbook pro, leopard (10.5.8), parallels 3.0, no parallels snapshots.

My parallels virtual disk is 30G and I'd like (need!) it to go 15G as I have no disk space left and this 30G is very unused.

Thanks,

Jim
 
Hi Stuw,

I have an old version and when following those instructions - going to configure and then to the hard disk - there is no edit button for changing the disk size.

I previously tried the Compact button to no effect.

There is a Recreate button, when I click it I get this popup warning:

"You are about to recreate your virtual hard disk. The existing virtual disk will be deleted and replaced with an empty virtual disk of the specified size. All data in your virtual machine will be lost. The operation is irreversible. Do you wish to continue?"

I presume this means the windows os install would be lost, yes? If so this is less than ideal.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Jim
 
There is two points of veiw.
1) Virtual disk capacity (how much data disk can contain) - disk size in Config Editor
2) Virtual disk files size on host filysystem - host files size (du -s /Path/To/virtual_disk.hdd)

What size do you want to decrease?
What version of Parallels product do you have?
 
Hi Stuw,

These numbers seem to be the same:

1) Virtual disk capacity (how much data disk can contain) - disk size in Config Editor

In the configuration editor window this is listed as 32000 MB

2) Virtual disk files size on host filysystem - host files size (du -s /Path/To/virtual_disk.hdd)

du -sh = 30 GB

If these are actually independent the latter is what I care about - I need some of this 30G to use for other things.

My version of Parallels is old: 3.0 (build 5608, June 9, 2008.)

Thanks,

Jim
 
Disk capacity limits disk files size on host. If Capacity is 32 GB disk can't be 64 GB on host filesystem (if there is no snapshots). Also you can't decrease disk files size on host if disk is full inside vm - we need space to store data.

Unfortunately Parallels Desktop 3 have inefficient tools to copact virtual hard disks and I have limited knowledge about it.

My proposal: for example if you have only 15 GB inside VM (and disk is 30 GB on host file system, in this case you can free about 15 GB on host filesystem) you can try to use some third party backup/restore tools:
1) create a full disk backup
2) stop VM
3) add second virtual disk
4) restore the backup to new virtual disk
5) exclude first virtual disk from VM config (do not delete it from host yet)
6) boot VM using only new virtual hard disk (with restored backup)
7) if VM boots fine you can delete backup and original hard disk
Note: you need enough free space to store backup and to store new virtual hard disk.
 
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