osx not seeing free space

S

StefanoF1

Bit poster
Hello,

I have a macbook with 256GB SSD. I've been wondering for some days why i had few space on my disk when i was not using it. Checking parallels option i noticed that my windows vm had 130 GB of available space, and about 50GB of used space. I thought that space wasn't seen from OS X as free space because it was allocated for the virtual machine. So I went trough parallels disk option and reduced the size of the vm from 130 to 70 GB, leaving around 20GB to Windows. However those 60GB I freed are not showing up in OS X..Did anybody have this issue before?

Thanks in advice,
Stefano Franchini
 
Hello @StefanoF1,
Could you check the type of virtual hard disk you have for your virtual machine, Actions->Configure->Hardware->Hard disk1.
Expanding disk: The file that stores an image of an expanding virtual disk and resides on your Host OS is small initially and grows as you add applications and data to the virtual hard disk in guest OS. In terms of the guest OS, the virtual hard disk capacity is fixed and equals to what you specified during virtual machine creation. In terms of the primary OS, the size of the virtual disk image file grows as you add new applications and data to the virtual hard disk. Using disks in this format saves space on the hard disk of your physical computer. The goal of the expanding disk is to save disk space in the primary OS. It cannot provide you with an infinitely expanding disk for your guest OS.'
Let's say you have created an expanding disk at the default size of 8GB. When you install Windows, it first uses about 1.5GB. With the expanding drive, the actual footprint of the .hdd file in Finder will be the same 1.5GB. As you add files and install programs, the drive file will expand to contain them, up to 8GB.
In contrast, if you have a plain disk at 8GB, Finder will read your .hdd file as 8GB, even if it's totally empty.
 
Thanks @Sasti@Parallels for you answer.
Yes I'm on expanding disk, actually with 70 GB of space. my ".pvm" file is 51 GB, in fact if I go on windows properties it says i have used 51 GB out of 70. but before resizing it was 130, in fact windows said i was using 51 GB out of 130. i resized it from 130 to 70 but those 60 GB are not showing up on my OS X free space..
 
Hi StefanoF1,

The 60 GB that you reduced from Windows is actually located in Mac hard drive from the beginning.

Check this below scenario for an example :
You have a Mac with 500 GB hard disk ( New Mac with no applications or files ) which has free space around 450 GB apart from your Mac OS X ( Where 50 GB is your Mac OS). If you create a Windows Virtual Machine using Parallels Desktop & allocated 120 GB space to virtual expanding hard disk ( Fresh installation ) - You will see the "Local C drive " properties as " 100 GB free of 120 GB " where 20 GB would be consumed by Windows OS and your Mac properties ( About Mac ) will show free space as 430 GB
( Excluding 50 GB of Mac OS + 20 GB of Windows OS ).

The size of Windows ( Right click > Get info on your Windows .pvm file ) will just be 20 GB.

In this case , when you decrease hard disk space for Windows Virtual Machine from 120 GB to 60 GB - Your Mac properties will still show the same free space as 430 GB but only 40 GB will be available on Windows virtual machine ( excluding Windows OS ).
Hope this explains !

Refer this article for more information.

Thanks,
Dhana.
 
Hi @Dhana@Parallels and thanks for your answer.
I understand your example, but in that case you actually had 120GB of free space to allocate for windows..In my case i had 20GB out of 250 of free space on my mac SSD, so how could parallels properties tell me that windows was using 50GB out of 130 if the only actually available space on the disk was 20GB? also going trough the file system and checking folders, I'm pretty sure I'm not using 230/250GB..Maybe I'll back my files up and format my mac, then reinstall everything
 
Last edited:
StefanoF1 said:
Hi @Dhana@Parallels and thanks for your answer.
I understand your example, but in that case you actually had 120GB of free space to allocate for windows..In my case i had 20GB out of 250 of free space on my mac SSD, so how could parallels properties tell me that windows was using 50GB out of 130 if the only actually available space on the disk was 20GB? also going trough the file system and checking folders, I'm pretty sure I'm not using 230/250GB..Maybe I'll back my files up and format my mac, then reinstall everything
Click to expand...
Could you generate a problem report and share the id here.
 
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