Running out of Disk Space

[JustinM2]

I am running Parallels on a MacBook Air. I recently started using a time capsule for backups and at the same time, turned on the snapshots in Parallels. Ever since then, I am running out of disk space on the Mac. It only has 128GB hard drive, but I am only creating documents. I should never use that whole space. Now I am running out of hard disk space and also get the low memory on startup error, too.

Have I set up the snapshots incorrectly? What can I do to free up memory? Can I move the default locations for snapshots to an external SD card?

 

[JustinM2]

UPDATE - I just deleted two of my three snapshots, and it freed up 24GB of disk space. Should they really be taking up that much space?

 

[PaulChristopher@Parallels]

Hello Justin,
A snapshot is a saved state of the virtual machine. Snapshots can be created manually or automatically when the virtual machine is running. After you make a snapshot, you can continue working with the virtual machine and revert to the created snapshot at any time of your work.

Snapshots are stored inside the virtual machine bundle, in the Snapshots subfolder. Each snapshot has a number of files, including the .sav file that contains the virtual machine's state, the .mem file that contains the memory dump for the virtual machine, and other different files of the virtual hard disk.

Snapshots are not backup copies or clones of your virtual machine. You cannot use them alone without your virtual machine or move them from the virtual machine bundle.

 

[JustinM2]

@PaulChris, thanks for the reply. If I cannot move the snapshots off of the hard disk, is there a way that I can manage how much space they consume? I have checked "Optimize for Time Machine" and it therefore has the "Snapshots to Keep" as Auto. Does that sound correct to you that each snapshot is consuming ~12GB of space? And I would need to keep about 36GB to keep the 3 snapshots it wants to keep?

It is crucial for me to have Time Machine back up my data. (Learned that the hard way when a Parallels update crashed Outlook and I lost my emails) Is running Parallels with Time Machine on a MacBook Air with a 128GB hard disk just not going to work?