multiple .vmdk files

[jamesdmc]

I ran Daisy Disk to try to find out why my boot disk is filling up. The two largest files on the disk were my two VMware disks. I have an XP SP3 virtual machine and a Vista virtual machine. I don't have many programs installed on each and don't use either that much so I was wondering why the xp was 134.2 GB and the vista one was 181.5 GB. Digging further into the vista machine, for example, I found this:

/Users/James/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/Windows Vista x64 Edition.vmwarevm/Windows Vista x64 Edition-000002.vmdk - 138 MB

/Users/James/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/Windows Vista x64 Edition.vmwarevm/Windows Vista x64 Edition-000003.vmdk - 35.5 MB

/Users/James/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/Windows Vista x64 Edition.vmwarevm/Windows Vista x64 Edition-000004.vmdk - 9.3 GB

/Users/James/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/Windows Vista x64 Edition.vmwarevm/Windows Vista x64 Edition-000005.vmdk - 41.1 GB

/Users/James/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/Windows Vista x64 Edition.vmwarevm/Windows Vista x64 Edition-000006.vmdk - 26.1 GB

/Users/James/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/Windows Vista x64 Edition.vmwarevm/Windows Vista x64 Edition-000007.vmdk - 1.3 GB

The same situation applies to the xp virtual machine. I have 14 .vmdk's there with a couple of them larger than 15 GB each. Why do I have so many virtual disks? Does the snapshot feature have something to do with it? If I delete some of them to recover some space, what are the possible ramifications? Thanks.

James

[rcardona2k · Accepted solution]

The same situation applies to the xp virtual machine. I have 14 .vmdk's there with a couple of them larger than 15 GB each. Why do I have so many virtual disks? Does the snapshot feature have something to do with it? If I delete some of them to recover some space, what are the possible ramifications? Thanks.

Yes these are snapshots. If you have AutoProtect enabled you can lower the number of protection snapshots to save on disk space. Usually it's safe to delete snapshots as the changes will get rolled up the line to the base vmdk. If you have this much space, deleting each link may take some time.

I normally use 1-2 manual snapshots right before I know I might do something to trash a VM like install AV or test out a firewall, etc.

[admin]

Usually it's safe to delete snapshots as the changes will get rolled up the line to the base vmdk. If you have this much space, deleting each link may take some time.

Just to be really clear, what Richard says only applies to deleting snapshots from within Fusion (so we get a chance to clean them up). If you delete them from the Finder, we do not get a chance to merge the changes back and you will lose them.

[rcardona2k]

Usually it's safe to delete snapshots as the changes will get rolled up the line to the base vmdk. If you have this much space, deleting each link may take some time.

Just to be really clear, what Richard says only applies to deleting snapshots from within Fusion (so we get a chance to clean them up). If you delete them from the Finder, we do not get a chance to merge the changes back and you will lose them.

Yes, thanks for clearing this up Eric. I do mean delete snapshot (as in remove them) from the Snapshot Manager not in the Finder. Good catch.

[jamesdmc]

Thanks for the responses. I assumed from Richard's first response that we were talking about deleting snapshots from the snapshot manager, not the Finder. And that's what I did. I got rid of some snapshots that were over a year old in the xp virtual machine and nearly a year old in the vista virtual machine and regained 150 GB of space. Thanks again. My question has been answered.

James