Reduce size of Windows VM hard disk ?

It's not outside the PVM.
That picture you are referring to is a special view i have setup in FINDER to show large files on disk. Please don't let that distract you from finding our solution. Here is a better picture for you about the HDD.

 

It is not possible for a HDS file to be 80GB and HDD to be 60GB because HDS file resides inside HDD. Please right click on the HDD and select show package contents then check how many HDS files and its size.

 

Sigh.. Deep breath, ok I counted to 10 to calm myself down. The picture you just looked at to come up with your latest response was created by doing the steps you just suggested, ... already. Too ease your mind on this I've uploaded some output from UNIX instead.

We need to get back on track to understanding why i can't reduce the size of my virtual harddrive using the gui slider.

Also, to show you I'm not just trying to be difficult, if you want to send me some more material to read on how a setting in the mac gui of 128 GB results in 57GB on disk, that would be helpful for me too.

 

I'm having the same issue.
I have plenty of space on both MAC (103 Gb) and Windows VM (155 Gb)
I just want to reduce the Windows size to 100 Gb and give 50 extra to the MAC.
See SS.
Thanks!

 

Something new today...
After restarting the Windows VM I've gotten the Recovery warning
See SS
Thanks!

 

I have the same problem: VM taking up double the HDD space that it should.

 

Still waiting on a helpful answer that isn't just "Run Disk Clean up."
All the 'help' I've received on this thread are all things I tried before I even started the thread.
5+ months is a long and rough wait to have someone actually address the issue never mind even solving the issue.

 

Matthew must have nerves of steel
This issue is not about "Missing space"!
The issue, Matthew, Louis and I are trying to get help with is about the inability to give an extra free space on the Windows VM back to the MAC

 

Reducing the disk size allocated might corrupt the virtual hard disk as the filesystem on the created HDD needs to be rewritten which might corrupt the guest OS. Try using Windows Disk Management and create unallocated space on the virtual HDD then use the GUI to reduce the disk size.

 

We can see that you have created an expanding disk. If you have created a plain disk then only the entire allocated space will be occupied on the Mac. As you have an expanding disk, reducing the limit of the virtual hard disk will not increase the free space on the Mac.

 

Locate .pvm file on the Finder and right click on it then select show package contents. Inside the bundle, you will find HDD file check its size and let us know.

 

Pic #1 - HDD file is 165.81 GB (Sidenote PVM file is 172.47 GB)
Pic #2 - VM set to 128 Capacity (Unable to shrink it when in properties)
Pic #3 - Used space in windows drive shows 60.9 GB
Pick #4 - Hard disk is 152.1 GB; Snaphots is 5.6 GB; Misc is 527.7 MB; Reclaimable 2.3 GB.

(HDD File - 165.82 GB) - (Snapshots 5.6 GB) - (Reclaimable 2.3 GB) - (Used space in Windows 60.9 GB) = 97.02 GB

Surely there is a way to get back some of the 97.02 GB that this software is taking up. Do no recommend "Run Disk Cleanup" There's only 100 MB to save there and only 7.9 GB to save with snapshots and reclaimable as shown above.

How do I get some (as much as possible) of that 97.02 GB out of the VM and onto my Mac? The slider to reconfigure doesn't work show in the other posts in this thread.

Thank you.

 

Hi MatthewB15,
Check if there are any System Restore points occupying space in Windows drive. Please follow the steps below to remove restore points in Windows 10.
Step 1: Press Windows+Pause Break key to open System and choose System protection.
Step 2: Select the hard disk whose system protection is on, and click Configure.
Step 3: Tap the Delete button.
Step 4: Choose to Continue to remove all restore points on the selected drive.

 

Thanks Ajith.
Following your steps I found that System Protection was off to begin with and there were no restore points to delete.
However I still did all 4 steps described with no change.

 

Hi MatthewB15,

I had a similar problem yesterday after activating bitlocker on my windows VM.
(Chose the option to encrypt the whole harddisk instead of just the used space in the process.)
This caused the VM to take up all the harddisk space of my Mac and made it unable to resize the VM/Disk in Parallels.

These are the steps I took to get the VM back from taking up 256GB to only taking up 52GB:
(Mind you, make a back-up of your VM before attempting this.)

1. Copied the .PVM file of the VM to an external HDD and open it in Parallels. (This freed up space on my Mac.)
2. Turned off bitlocker in the VM.
3. Used Gparted to boot into the VM and use it to decrease the partition size. (Make sure all partitions are sequential and the unallocated space is at the end of the disk.) Here is the resource on Gparted I used: Reduce size of a virtual disk in Paralles...
4. Turned off the VM and tried to resize the disk in Parallels (Parallels was able to decrease the disk size unlike before, I tried to make sure the size matched the one I chose in Gparted)
5. Copied the .PVM file of the VM back to the Mac and started it up.
6. Activated bitlocker again but this time with the option to only encrypt the used space.

Hopefully this information (or just a part of it) is useful to you guys.

 

Thanks for the reply Bryan.
I'm not running bitlocker so that won't be the answer for me.

 

Hi have the same problem.
space inside windows 7 is 84 gb used. my pmv file is 160gb and the hdd files consist of 2 files 110gb ,51gb
And parallels says that i have no snapshots.

I Have tested the Gparted solution but then no boot disk is found.



Regards Joacim

 

Come on Parallels support team! You can do it, you can answer our question and get to the bottom of this issues we are all facing. You've had 10 months to work on it I'm sure you've almost got it figured out. Let us know! Excited to have this resolved. (alternative post: Parallels, I'm sad, you don't seem to care about this issue at all)

 

Do you have the backup of the PVM file from which you can restore?

 

Check and confirm if the Trim option is enabled under VM configuration > Hardware > Hard disk > Advanced