Major issue when reclaiming disk space

I gave up long ago. I purchased an external Thunderbolt SSD and PD15 works flawlessly. The only caveat is that I cannot reboot the Mac while the VM is running. Reclaiming disk space takes just seconds on the external drive. This is more proof that to me, it's the disk shrinking and the APFS "purgeable space" that are stepping on each other.

 

Dear RHS, can I just ask you which type of file system are you using on the external hard drive?
I'm really suffering of problems now with PD15 and the internal SSD drive. When PD reclaims disk space the Mac is stuck for ages, it comes completely unresponsive and I cannot even work with OSX applications. It's a pain and I'm thinking to even abandon PD (I'm using it since version 8!!!), in favour of VMware or Virtual Box if this problems is not solved. I'm simply going crazy...
Thanks!

 

Greetings,
The external Thunderbolt SSD is APFS just like the internal SSD on the Mac. It works perfectly. Make sure you purchase an external SSD with a very fast transfer rate. Mine is up to 2800MB/s. Be aware that you CANNOT shut down or put to sleep the Mac host machine while running Windows on the external drive.

 

I just successfully reclaimed space on my SSD today on my MacBook Pro, but it was heart in mouth stuff..... here are 2 key points I learned from my experience.
1. Be patient. There should be a warning but there isn't, that the reclaiming of space takes lots of TIME! There should be a warning that it could take 45 minutes to an hour.
2. Be patient again! The counter for the process of reclaiming space was stuck on 40% for me for about half an hour..... it seemed like absolutely no progress was being made. I almost turned off my computer a couple of times, but thankfully I didn't as I read of possible corruption issues as per this post! Therefore, keep your computer plugged in and just let it do its work.
3. Back up before you go through this process. In hindsight, and there should also be a warning to backup, and there was early mention that Parallels "recommends" backing up before reclaiming space, but there isn't! It's just a clean button without warning.

Hopefully my experience helps somone.

 

I'm in the middle of this issue right now. It has been running for about 8 hours so far, all the while reading mass amounts of data from disk and making my whole computer worthless (I have a high end 2019 MBP). The progress bar has been stuck at about 1/3 since the first half hour or so. It hasn't budged a pixel since. I've missed one day of work so far. Not giving users a warning that this can occur is pretty negligent. I'll let it run over night and see what happens.

 

After 24 hours I had to kill it. I tried killing the prl_disp_service which is the one that had 2.64 TB of data reads (I only have a 1 TB drive) but the data was still being read. Then I tried killing the Parallels process. The data was STILL being read. I then tried to shutdown, which didn't work and then I had to force reboot. Now I'm stuck at the Parallels "Starting..." window, with the prl_disp_service reading mass data again. I'll give it some time and see what happens. For reference, I'm on APFS, and all my software is up to date (macOS 10.5.6 and Parallels 16).

 

After another half day of waiting around, I finally gave up and reverted to a 3 week old backup of my VM. A warning on your friendly "hey we can free up space!" dialog box reminding users to backup their VM beforehand and that it could take a long time would be a nice touch and would take your developers all of 30-60 seconds.

 

I feel your pain. It seems this issue has not been corrected. Is your VM file on the same disk as your OS?
I purchased an external SSD (mentioned in a previous post in this thread). I cleared a lot of junk from my VM and reclaimed over 250GB of space. It took maybe 30 seconds. This was all on the external drive.

 

Yes, it was on the same disk as my OS.

 

Wow. I wish I had thought to look for this thread before I started trying to reclaim some disk space with Parallels. Since this EXACT thing just happened to me. I see this issue has been happening since at least 2018. Way to go Parallels!

 

I'm sorry. I know it all started with Apple's APFS and their "purgeable space" hootenanny. I had to do a complete restore of my system maybe 4 times. It took HOURS to do that. At least I know that Time Machine works very well. I don't think Parallels can fix it, and I'm sure Apple doesn't care. I asked Parallels support about how I could convert my VM from variable to static and they told me they do not recommend it. I gave up and moved on with my life. Depending on how you value what's on your Windows VM, I would invest in an external Thunderbolt SSD like I did. It runs very well.

 

Already getting ready to order one. My virtual PC isn't THAT important but I DO need it. Plus, I guess this way it's one thing I can completely clear off my internal drive. Although it will mean carrying around another hard drive.

 

I got lucky on the issue. It took 5 hours but it did work. It said ´35´ for most of the 5 hours and then jumped to ´100´ in the last minute. I do admit to having some panicky thoughts after reading this thread.

 

Make sure your external SSD has a nice and FAST data transfer rate.

 

You got lucky. I was able to successfully shrink my VM file while it resided on my APFS drive with everything else...once...and never again.

 

I just gave up. I couldn't keep my machine locked up for X amount of hours in the hope that it would work. I did not mess up my hard drive though...that I know of. I just moved my virtual disks to the trash (amid the numerous beachballs) then rebooted. Everything back to normal. Then I restored my virtual disks from a clone I had and that worked. Still going the external route though. Just to keep them off my internal.

 

How long does it take to reclaim disk space?
I think I may have the same issue here. Parallels must disable this function before any other customer gets the same problem. Parallels knows that this problem occurs for more than half a year.

 

After this feature of reclaiming disk space from Parallels Toolbox was busy reclaiming space for around an hour (which should not take more than 2-3 mins for 20GB), I did some online reading and found problems reported about this back in 2013. I then interrupted (closed) the proces but now I cannot get my mac to function normally anymore. The wheel is spinning and there is a delay for every action up to several minutes. I talked to support twice, they tried to be helpful but the calls were dropped twice. They wanted me to remove all Parallels apps and then use First Aid from Disk Utitliy. If that was bad, I would need to contact Apple for further troubleshooting. Hello, my mac has been running fine for 3 years and this is happening after "reclaiming space with Parallels" and then I would need to call Apple?? The disk is fine, btw. I am waiting for additional instructions per email. Likely I have to restore my entire system from Time Machine as discussed. Fortunately I have backups, but it is almost 4 am and I have to work in a few hours.
DO NOT USE THIS FEATURE!!!

 

I restored my entire system from Time Machine (several times...ugh) before I gave up. As mentioned before, I moved my PVM to an external Thunderbolt SSD and I have had no trouble since. It takes maybe a minute to reclaim >200GB. It's super fast on the SSD...as long as the PVM is NOT on your primary drive.

 

I'm in the same fucked up state as you all - except I didn't realized I was going to fall into this hell hole. My "recovery" has been running for about 2.5hrs so far.... Nice to see the Parallels folks jumping in on this one...