Ran into an issue recently with one of my VMs. Wanted to back it up but was 200GB. I knew there wasn’t that much data on it anymore, it had just grown to that. But in Windows when you delete a file you don’t delete it really, Windows just flags it to be overwritten.<\/p>\n
You can use this tool first but don’t think it’s needed. CCleaner and Fileshredder can do the same. That is, wipe the free space while in Windows.<\/p>\n
SDelete Sysinternals as MS<\/a> <\/p>\n In Windows go to a CMD and to the location of sdelete and type<\/p>\n sdelete -c<\/p>\n That cleans the free space. Then shut down the VM.<\/p>\n Once shut down go to a CMD and go to where VMWARE is installed. Mine is<\/p>\n D:\\Program Files (x86)\\VMware\\VMware Workstation<\/p>\n Then run vmware-vdiskmanager.exe to shrink the VM. This is done with the -k switch.<\/p>\n My VM was in a different location to the diskmanager tool so ended up like this<\/p>\n vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -k “f:\\vm\\test lab\\xp.vmdk”<\/p>\n Once you hit enter you should see a Shrink: 0% meaning it’s started. Could take a while. I just left mine running while at work so don’t know how long it took.<\/p>\n The ” are needed it appears.<\/p>\n It works great. Mine went from 200GB to 26GB.<\/p>\n This site helped with this discovery. Ran into an issue recently with one of my VMs. Wanted to back it up but was 200GB. I knew there wasn’t that much data on it anymore, it had just grown to that. But in Windows when you delete … Continue reading
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\nhttp:\/\/www.itstuff.ca\/2009\/06\/how-to-shrink-vmware-virtual-disk-files.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"