Steps for shrinking a vmware disk for a Windows guest VM inside VMware Workstation of VMware Fusion
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/01/13
Another one from the “missed schedule” series, this one was originally scheduled for 20130927.
These articles were not very clear on the actual steps to take:
- VMware KB: Defragmenting, shrinking, and cleaning up VMware Fusion virtual machine disks.
- VMware KB: Defragmenting and shrinking VMware Workstation virtual machine disks.
The steps I tried:
- made sure I did not have any snapshots (they are incompatible with shrinking disks)
- in the Windows guest: at an elevated command prompt, defrag the drive and consolidate the free space (defrag C: /U /V /X)
- in the Windows guest: in Disk Management, shrink the partition
- shutdown the VM
- defrag the vmdk from within VMware Workstation/Fusion
- compact the vmdk from within VMware Workstation/Fusion
- boot the Windows guest
- in the Windows guest: shrink the volume in VMware Tools
- in the Windows guest: wait for VMware tools to perform the first shrink step, and to prompt for the second step
- wait for VMware Workstation/Fusion to perform the second step of the shrink
Maybe step 3 was not strictly needed, but this gives me some head room on the guest side: I can always expand it when it is needed (this is a boot drive after all).
–jeroen
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
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