NEW Problem that would LOVE an answer!

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darkakira

Junior Member
Hey there everyone!

I have a HUGE issue with parallels.

I am using Windows XP SP2 as my guest OS. The HDD in the OS is using 1.43 GB of disk space.

The virtual disk is taking up 13 GB of Disk space on my hard drive, and the space I allocated originally was 32 GB.

WTF is the disk Image over 6x's the size of the guest OS+Applications installed?!?!?!

I have wandered the web for hours and found NO ONE with this issue yet. I want to get my space back. Also, how can I decrease the size of the allocated space. I clearly only need about 5 Gb, not 32 Gb.

Please provide solutions. It would be awesome if SOMEONE knew what was going on.

P.S - I tried the parallels compression and optimization tools. No luck decreasing the virtual disk image size. Still stays at 13 Gb.

I am running Parallels Desktop 3.0 Build 5160 on a MacBook 13" with a Core 2 Duo 2.0 Ghz processor, 2 GB RAM, and a 120 Gb hard drive
 
Same Issue. Since the new update, the disk space on my 'Macintosh HD' has been decreasing, as this file increases. I will be out of disk space soon ...
 
jackybe67 said:
How did you compress ?

Do compressing while xp is running......
Click to expand...

I will say this again.

I did ALL of the compression type available through the Parallels program. None of them worked.

The Space being used in the Guest OS is 1.43 GB, but the virtual disk size is 13GB. The disk is set to use a maximum of 32 GB, but is no where near that.

Why is the VIRTUAL DISK so much bigger than what is actual being used by Guest OS.
 
darkakira said:
I will say this again.

I did ALL of the compression type available through the Parallels program. None of them worked.

The Space being used in the Guest OS is 1.43 GB, but the virtual disk size is 13GB. The disk is set to use a maximum of 32 GB, but is no where near that.

Why is the VIRTUAL DISK so much bigger than what is actual being used by Guest OS.
Click to expand...

Have you tried going to the windows Disk management tool to see if by any chance you don't have an empty partition hanging around?
 
fbronner said:
Have you tried going to the windows Disk management tool to see if by any chance you don't have an empty partition hanging around?
Click to expand...

I have gone to the windows partition tool and did not see anything out of the ordinary. Nothing that would explain the tremendous size of my virtual drive.
 
Disk Cleanup?

Perhaps a purely Windows solution is in order?

If you haven't already, try running Windows' Disk Cleanup utility. This removes cruft such as temporary files, offline webpages, and of course Recycle Bin contents. For example, I have some 489 MB in my recycle bin; past time to empty it.

It also occurs to me that if you have multiple user accounts in Windows (I have an admin & a normal user), you should do this for each user.

In XP,
Control Panel > Performance & Maintenance > Free up space...


hope that helps.
 
MG_work said:
Perhaps a purely Windows solution is in order?

If you haven't already, try running Windows' Disk Cleanup utility. This removes cruft such as temporary files, offline webpages, and of course Recycle Bin contents. For example, I have some 489 MB in my recycle bin; past time to empty it.

It also occurs to me that if you have multiple user accounts in Windows (I have an admin & a normal user), you should do this for each user.

In XP,
Control Panel > Performance & Maintenance > Free up space...


hope that helps.
Click to expand...

I have tried this multiple times. I only use 1 account.

Like I said. In the guest OS, if you right-click>properties. You can see the disk. It tells you what it is using. Mine is using 1.43 GB. Thats all.
 
jackybe67 said:
If the problem stay's i would consider deleting this vm and install it from scratch.
Click to expand...

That's what I was thinking. But the problem is...

I lost my XP SP2 disc and my office install disc (people in my house moved my stuff), so i can't reinstall at the moment.
 
Odd. To repeat what you say, you have a Windows installation that's reporting 1.5Gb, but when you check the virtual disk it's 13Gb despite you running the compression utility.

As you say, something's not right.

Is there any possibility that there are any files around on the XP disc that could consume this disc space? Just to verify, run chkdisk on the XP machine. With /F if it reports errors.

But then again, running the compressor should have run Chkdisk first.

Another thing is to run Windows explorer, navigate to the C drive root and get the size from there. Or use a command prompt and use DIR (possibly with /S to recurse).

Ah, one other thought: what's your system restore set to? Programs>accessories>tools>restore
It's stashed in the "c:/System Volume Information" folder (or something like that). You won't have permissions to read this directory without changing permissions using the command line.

On NTFS, it is possible to "hide" files such that they report back as small but in fact they're very large. But this thought ends up down the virus thread and is highly unlikely.


Still, it's an interesting problem!
 
GlennG said:
Odd. To repeat what you say, you have a Windows installation that's reporting 1.5Gb, but when you check the virtual disk it's 13Gb despite you running the compression utility.

As you say, something's not right.

Is there any possibility that there are any files around on the XP disc that could consume this disc space? Just to verify, run chkdisk on the XP machine. With /F if it reports errors.

But then again, running the compressor should have run Chkdisk first.

Another thing is to run Windows explorer, navigate to the C drive root and get the size from there. Or use a command prompt and use DIR (possibly with /S to recurse).

Ah, one other thought: what's your system restore set to? Programs>accessories>tools>restore
It's stashed in the "c:/System Volume Information" folder (or something like that). You won't have permissions to read this directory without changing permissions using the command line.

On NTFS, it is possible to "hide" files such that they report back as small but in fact they're very large. But this thought ends up down the virus thread and is highly unlikely.


Still, it's an interesting problem!
Click to expand...

The root is still 1.43GB

System Restore is disabled and all restore points were deleted.

There are no hidden files taking up space. If there were, it would have shown up in the Disk itself being used up.

There are no errors on the Disk from within the Guest OS.
 
Hmm, so in that case we have the following:
- file system used space is 1.43Gb.
- the partition for the C drive is big and set to 'expand'
- you've run the compression utility and it didn't compress.

I wonder if there's a way of creating a new virtual disk and copying the data from yours onto the new one. I wonder if the Parallels Image Tool will do the job?

As you can take a copy of the original disc when the VM's not loaded, it's a low risk operation - just make sure it's on a different hard disc!
 
GlennG said:
Hmm, so in that case we have the following:
- file system used space is 1.43Gb.
- the partition for the C drive is big and set to 'expand'
- you've run the compression utility and it didn't compress.

I wonder if there's a way of creating a new virtual disk and copying the data from yours onto the new one. I wonder if the Parallels Image Tool will do the job?

As you can take a copy of the original disc when the VM's not loaded, it's a low risk operation - just make sure it's on a different hard disc!
Click to expand...

Perhaps that would work. I could try copying it to a smaller virtual disk, and then deleting the huge one.

We'll see how it goes.
 
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