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Shrinking a Virtual Disk

You can physically reclaim space in virtual disks using the shrink functionality provided in VMware Tools. This feature is also useful if you are upgrading existing virtual machines to Workstation 3.0. The new disk format provides improved disk I/O performance.

Note: To upgrade a virtual hard disk to Workstation 3.0, be sure to execute Settings > Upgrade Disk. Running this command does not change the way the disk is stored; rather, it changes the version of Workstation that runs on the virtual hard disk. For example, this command affects the virtual hardware that Workstation uses (such as the virtual hardware that supports USB).

The virtual disks to be shrunk must be booted in persistent mode. (The mode of a virtual disk may be modified before the virtual machine is powered on by choosing Settings > Configuration Editor, selecting the virtual disk, and then choosing a Persistent as the disk mode. This operation requires free disk space equal to the size of the virtual disk being shrunk.

To shrink a virtual disk on a Windows guest operating system:

  1. Double-click the VMware Tools icon (generally in the system tray at the end of the taskbar).
  2. Click the Shrink tab.
  3. Select the disk you want to shrink, and click Prepare to Shrink.
  4. Follow the on-screen instructions.

To shrink a virtual disk on a Linux guest operating system:

  1. Open VMware Tools. If it is not available, launch it by running vmware-toolbox.
  2. Click the Shrink tab.
  3. Select the mount point for the disk you want to shrink, and click Prepare to Shrink.
  4. Follow the on-screen instructions.

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