Problematic Size of .PVM file

P

Peter Clarke

Junior Member
On a MacBook Pro I have 160 GB hard drive which is (unbelievably) almost full since I have been believing that I have so very little 'extra' software stored on it. I have had to delete all photographs and music just so I can start Parallels. Research has revealed that my "Windows on Mac.pvm" file (Windows XP Pro) is 79.71 GB (yes, GB) large.

Since I have only allocated 32 GB for Windows, and using only 22 GB so far, WHY is my .pvm file taking so much valuable space?

How do I correct this to substantially reduce the .pvm size, please?
 
Check the contents of the .pvm:

ls -ld ~/Documents/Parallels/*.pvm; ls -lRA ~/Documents/Parallels/*.pvm

Maybe you have some snapshots or extra .hdd's that you're not using.
 
I have only 428 KB in my Parallels folder, a 56 KB Parallels 6.0.html file, and then the big 79 GB .pvm file, no .hdds and no snapshots.
Can something build and build to incorporate in the .pvm file? This file size makes no sense unless this file is storing 4 or five legacy packages.
 
The .pvm file is actually a folder. Check the contents in Terminal.app using the command line I gave.
 
Ok joevt - thanks. I didn't understand that that was a command line for Terminal. I'm not that savy. I now did that and got a rather huge listing which shows:

PetersMacBook-2:~ Peter$ ls -ld ~/Documents/Parallels/*.pvm; ls -lRA ~/Documents/Parallels/*.pvm
drwxr-xr-x@ 12 Peter Peter 408 15 Oct 11:40 /Users/Peter/Documents/Parallels/Windows on Mac.pvm
total 58512
-rwxr--r--@ 1 Peter Peter 6148 19 Sep 2008 .DS_Store
-rwxr--r-- 1 Peter Peter 16 21 Nov 2008 .Windows on Mac.pvs.lock
drwxr-xr-x 15 Peter Peter 510 25 Aug 15:09 Snapshots
-rwxr--r-- 1 Peter Peter 2595 25 Aug 15:09 Snapshots.xml
drwxr-xr-x 5 Peter Peter 170 15 Oct 11:37 Windows Disks
-rwxr--r-- 1 Peter Peter 18059 15 Oct 11:40 config.pvs
-rwxr--r-- 1 Peter Peter 18059 15 Oct 11:40 config.pvs.backup
-rw-rw-rw- 1 Peter Peter 29827309 15 Oct 11:40 parallels.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root Peter 66455 15 Oct 11:40 statistic.log
drwxr-xr-x@ 12 Peter Peter 408 15 Oct 11:38 winxp.hdd

/Users/Peter/Documents/Parallels/Windows on Mac.pvm/Snapshots:
total 1235600
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 10422 21 Nov 2008 {3cc153a3-a83d-4bb7-ba0a-eaee77cb7ba4}.pvc
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 10422 21 Nov 2008 {3cc153a3-a83d-4bb7-ba0a-eaee77cb7ba4}.pvc.backup
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 404840512 25 Aug 15:09 {8ac9133f-2233-44ff-9ca2-fe1991d9df79}.mem
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 42118 25 Aug 15:09 {8ac9133f-2233-44ff-9ca2-fe1991d9df79}.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 13957 25 Aug 15:09 {8ac9133f-2233-44ff-9ca2-fe1991d9df79}.pvc
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 7248432 25 Aug 15:09 {8ac9133f-2233-44ff-9ca2-fe1991d9df79}.sav
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 10112 21 Nov 2008 {a7e1c825-f55f-414d-8719-d0ab5a3cecf5}.pvc
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 10112 21 Nov 2008 {a7e1c825-f55f-414d-8719-d0ab5a3cecf5}.pvc.backup
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 213131328 22 Aug 18:59 {ab88c9c7-0379-4fdb-be33-a80bcfb11514}.mem
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 16015 22 Aug 18:59 {ab88c9c7-0379-4fdb-be33-a80bcfb11514}.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 13957 22 Aug 18:59 {ab88c9c7-0379-4fdb-be33-a80bcfb11514}.pvc
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 7235600 22 Aug 18:59 {ab88c9c7-0379-4fdb-be33-a80bcfb11514}.sav
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 13886 27 Dec 2009 {db57fa20-a4bb-4981-88a5-2573c67953ee}.pvc

/Users/Peter/Documents/Parallels/Windows on Mac.pvm/winxp.hdd:
total 163370080
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 3431 15 Oct 11:38 DiskDescriptor.xml
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 3431 15 Oct 09:32 DiskDescriptor.xml.Backup
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 0 21 Nov 2008 winxp.hdd
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 1846269440 13 Nov 2008 winxp.hdd.0.{3cc153a3-a83d-4bb7-ba0a-eaee77cb7ba4}.hds
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 12164931072 15 Oct 11:40 winxp.hdd.0.{5fbaabe3-6958-40ff-92a7-860e329aab41}.hds
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 2096801280 25 Aug 15:09 winxp.hdd.0.{8ac9133f-2233-44ff-9ca2-fe1991d9df79}.hds
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 21967078400 6 Nov 2008 winxp.hdd.0.{a7e1c825-f55f-414d-8719-d0ab5a3cecf5}.hds
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 16542521856 25 Aug 15:09 winxp.hdd.0.{ab88c9c7-0379-4fdb-be33-a80bcfb11514}.hds
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 29027852288 27 Dec 2009 winxp.hdd.0.{db57fa20-a4bb-4981-88a5-2573c67953ee}.hds
-rw-r--r-- 1 Peter Peter 6672 15 Oct 09:30 winxp.hdd.drh
PetersMacBook-2:~ Peter$ 29827309 15 Oct 11:40 parallels.lo

I have no idea what this means but if those numbers are bytes, I can only think that surely this is excessive. Can you advise further how I would reduce, say, snapshots or some of these .hds that have old dates on them. OR maybe they all need to be there - I just don't have a clue.

I sure appreciate your assistance to date, joevt.
 
You have some snapshots. Go to Virtual Machine -> Manage Snapshots. Select a Snapshot and click the Delete button.

Disable Smart Guard if you have it enabled. Virtual Machine -> Configure -> Options -> Backup.

When the snapshots are deleted then check the contents of your .pvm again.
 
Yup ... did try to delete the snapshots already but because my free space is so limited, it won't let me delete any of the snapshots. I don't know how many MBs/GBs I need free, so hesitate to start deleting applications to expand the free space. And, if I do, should that be on the Windows side or the Mac side. Quite a conundrum for me. Do you think that deleting the snapshots will actually reduce my .pvm size by 40GBs or so? Thanks for your continuing help here; much appreciated.
 
You need to delete stuff on the Mac side. If you can't find stuff to delete then you need an external hard disk. Do you have another Mac with free space? You can connect the other Mac with a FireWire cable and use FireWire Target Disk mode to use it as an external disk.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1661
 
More good info joevt, thanks. I have no other Mac to connect to and my two external disks are not compatible, apparently. So ... I went ahead and deleted everything from my Windows virtual machine, deleted Windows and Parallels 6.0. I then reinstalled it all again after deleting the old 79 GB .pvm file and the Parallels folder. So far so good and have recovered over 77 GB of space. This time I actually READ the Parellel's Desktop Users Guide - what a concept (sic). I found on page 203 this, which I am guessing addresses my problem:
Compressing the Disk
If you use an expanding (p. 217 of the Users Guide) virtual hard disk in your virtual machine, its image file size on
the physical hard disk increases as you add new data to the virtual hard disk. When you delete
some data from this virtual hard disk, free unused space appears on the disk, but the amount of
space your virtual machine occupies on the hard disk of your Mac does not reduce. To free the
unused space back to Mac, click the Compress button. The virtual hard disk will be compressed
and the hard disk image file size will be decreased. As a result, there will be more free space on
your Mac hard disk.
Thanks again for all your assistance, 'joevt'.
 
Can't delete some snapshots

I was following this thread on reclaiming disk space, and went to Manage Snapshots, found 8 of them. I don't want any. I started deleting the most recent one (#8) and that went okay, but when I tried to delete #7, it said the previous task has to finish first. So I delete #1, and #2 successfully, but now I get that same error message when I try to delete any others. I existed Manage Snapshots and re-entered it, but same problem. I'd reboot, except that shutting down the Mac takes about 5 minutes (why????).

Thanks for any help.
 
P.S. on deleting snapshots

Should have said:

Parallels 5, build 558741, on Macbook Pro, virtual machine is XP. Not an upgrade from any beta version. Have assigned Windows swap file to a separate virtual HD (supposedly this speeds things up, but I'm not convinced).
 
I sent this on "slow reply," but let me try quick: I tried deleting some snapshots. I have 8 (don't need any). I deleted #8 successfully, but then was unable to delete #7, got an error message about a previous operation needing to be completed. I waited a bit, nothing happened. Couldn't delete #7, but was able to delete #1 and #2, but now every subsequent attempt at deleting gives the same error message.

I have Parallels 5, build 558741, for XP virtual machine on Macbook Pro. I use a separate virtual HD for the Win swap file (supposedly, this speeds things up on the Win side, but I'm dubious about that).

I'm could re-boot the Mac but it takes 5 minutes just to shut down (why???).
 
Harry Binswanger said:
I tried deleting some snapshots. I have 8 (don't need any). I deleted #8 successfully, but then was unable to delete #7, got an error message about a previous operation needing to be completed. I waited a bit, nothing happened. Couldn't delete #7, but was able to delete #1 and #2, but now every subsequent attempt at deleting gives the same error message.
Click to expand...
Weird. Maybe a reboot will help.

Harry Binswanger said:
I have Parallels 5, build 558741, for XP virtual machine on Macbook Pro. I use a separate virtual HD for the Win swap file (supposedly, this speeds things up on the Win side, but I'm dubious about that).
Click to expand...
There would be no difference for a virtual machine unless you put the two virtual hard disks on two different physical disks.

Harry Binswanger said:
I'm could re-boot the Mac but it takes 5 minutes just to shut down (why???).
Click to expand...
Note the time (with seconds) when you reboot. Then use Console.app to check the logs for stuff between the time when you select reboot, and when it actually does reboot.
 
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