To clean up the disk, I recently scanned my Macbook Pro (10.4) with an app called WhatSize and discovered that I had several files associated with my Virtual HD. These files are called winxp.hdd{44hcdnf897vdblah}.hds I'm using Parallels Build 5600. My virtual disk is allocated 22Gb but these 'sub' files total a whopping 42Gb. None of the files seem to correlate to any of the use stats I've pulled up for the Virtual drive so I'm not sure what these files represent. What are these files for? Can I reclaim precious disk space by deleting any of these if they are not relevant? How would I know which of these files are the file that actually represent the virtual drive? Thanks in advance.
Those are either snapshots, or you selected to split files in 2 gb, backup your VM, and run Snapshot manager to undo, or merge or use Parallels Image Tool to merge all snapshots. Do backup first
Many Thanks John. It worked as proposed. I used the Image tool and merged the snapshots. Result: regained 22Gb.