Workstation and Disk is running out of space

[mbeierl]

I've got a 250gb partition where my VMs are stored.  It seems that VMware Workstation uses a percentage to determine when the disk is filling up, so that I get the annoying VM is suspended until you free up more space error message when there is still few GBs free.  Is there any way to suppress this message, or lower its sensitivity?

[WoodyZ]

If you only have a few GB of free space on a 250 GB disk then IMO it is effectively full and you should always maintain a reasonable percentage of free disk space.  Of course the definition of reasonable percentage of free disk space will vary however I always try maintain no less then 5% free but to each their own.

You can use the following in the .vmx configuration file however use it at your own risk as it can cause irreversible damage if you fill the disk completely!

mainMem.freeSpaceCheck = "FALSE"

[mbeierl]

What if I only had a few GBs left on a 20GB disk?  Would that be full?  The parameter might be helpful, but the real issue is that I would like the level of protection that VMware provides, but not false warnings because I've dropped down from 5gb to 4.5gb free space.

Parital answer

[WoodyZ]

At one point in time VMware didn't check at all and many users came here complaining their system or VM crashed due to the fact that the disk was literally full so while you may not like the fact that VMware is trying to protect oblivious users none the less it was a step in the right direction and at least you can override it however just be aware of the consequences before doing so.  Yes having a User Defined Threshold would be nicer however until then it is as it is!