Problems expanding virtual boot drive

M

MarkV22

Junior Member
I am new to Parallels. I've setup a new Win 11 machine and I started with a 256G virtual disk. After a couple of days of installing and copying files, I then expanded it to 512G (using Parallels Hardware for the VM). I've just gotten a message in Windows that I'm running out of disk space. I then update the virtual HD to 768G. And it still complains about lack of disk space. I boot the VM and pull up the Disk Management app on Windows and I find the original 256G hard drive and instead of an unallocated 512G portion of the disk, there seems to be Health Partition of about 512G in size. I did not create the health partition. And I find that the only option I have for editing that partition is 'help'. I cannot find any options to delete shrink or anything.

The visual HD in Parallels shows 768G capacity.
I can't imagine that Parallels would let me shrink the space knowing the windows partitions that are setup.
I can't imagine how the Health Partition was ever created.
I can't figure out how to delete the Health Partition.
Anyone have this experience before? Anyone know how I can get the boot disk expanded and the health partition deleted?
(Note: the smaller 100MB pair of partitions on the front of the virtual disk are there, one of which is also a Health partition. I do not think I should mess with those.)

I could use some help sorting this out. Thanks very much.
 
After checking reagentc /info from a powershell prompt, it seems that the 512 Heath partition is the active one and is why I can't alter it.
Would creating a second virtual HD be my only option in this case? I would rather expand my existing boot drive.
 
I found no way to remove the Health partition. I did shrink it back to about 50G by shrinking my virtual disk to the size of my virtual boot partition plus 50G in size. It seems the Health partition automatically shrinks as I shrink the virtual HD. I've no idea what a proper size for a health partition should be. But given the other partitions are MB in size, 50G seems okay if not perhaps a bit excessive. 50G is me being cautious.

I'll presume for now that Windows 11 did allocate that partition for me at some point without my knowledge thereby taking up my unallocated disk area.

My work around is to create a second volume. It is odd that 'D' is not an option for the drive letter in Windows. It starts with 'E' even though I do not have a DVD attached to this system. I get to use 'E' as the second drive letter. I also got to eject all my USB drives to free up letters.

If anyone discovers the proper way to uninstall that health partition and allow me to properly expand my boot partition, I'm all ears. I am all for a learning experience.
 
I'm not sure what version of Parallels I'm running, but I'm sure it's the latest available as of 2/13/2025.
 
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