What if there is not enough file space for cleanup?

[HolgerStotz]

I have a 250GB hard drive in my MacBook Pro and run a Windows virtual machine that consumes 150GB of that hard disc space. Of course most of the rest of the hard disc stores the Mac operating system and applications. I have literally only 15 GB of free space left.

Looking at the hard disc settings in Fusion (V5) it recommends cleanup of the virtual machine and under general it says that I have 49GB of reclaimable space in that virtual machine. However if I click on cleanup it says that it cannot be completed because there is not enough free space in the file system. I should try again after I have freed up 65 GB which of course I cannot do...

Any idea how I can get out of this situation. Is it possible to use an external hard drive temporarily to create that space?

Thank you!

[wila]

Hi,

Yes that's the best way to resolve this.

Get an external harddisk with about 250 GB free space.

1. Close down VMware fusion completely.

2. Copy the VM to the external disk (you can select to move it, but... you won't have a backup copy if anything goes wrong)

3. Open the "new" VM without running from the File menu.

4. Rename the new VM so you can identify old/new.

5. You can test your VM now, select "move" if it asks if you moved or copied the VM as the old one is only there now as your life line if anything goes wrong.

6. Shrink your VM on the external disk (*)

7. Test it still works OK (should be)

8. Remove your original (delete disks) <- careful this one deletes your original!

9. Close VMware Fusion again

10. Copy your external disk version back to your computer.

11. File open run (select "Move" when asked "move/copy")

(*) You might want to consider at step 6 to change the disk in your VM into a split disk. (Option "split into multiple files" under disk settings) as then you only need about 4 GB free disk when you want to shrink it.

hope this helps and good luck!

--

Wil

[HolgerStotz]

HI Wil, thanks a lot for your quick response. It sounds easy enough that I will try this with my limited experience with Fusion. I'll get to it on the weekend and let you know how it went. Thanks again! 🙂

Holger

[HaleTom]

For future googlers, here is what I did:

Prerequisite: Need to remove all snapshots first.

Shrink every .vmdk disk individually to clear up space:

"c:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\vmware-vdiskmanager.exe" -k Manjaro-000001.vmdk

"c:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\vmware-vdiskmanager.exe" -k Manjaro-000002.vmdk

vmware-vdiskmanager.exe /?  -- says that even more space is freed if running defrag before shrink.

[frakman1]

3. Open the "new" VM without running from the File menu.

Can you please explain what this means?

Thanks

[wila]

Hi,

It means, from the menu select File -> Open.

This will then show a finder dialog that you can use to navigate to the VM on the external media.

Do not click the big play button that will be presented in the new window that opens.

Btw, I have written an application - see my signature - that is designed for making backups of virtual machines to external media (or network drives)

It is free to use, unless you want to use the built-in scheduler for automatic backups.

--
Wil