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Shrinking a Virtual Disk
You can physically reclaim space in virtual disks using the shrink
feature provided in VMware Tools. For example, if you have removed files from your virtual disk and want to reduce the amount of storage space that the virtual disk consumes on your host operating system, you can remove the excess space from the virtual disk using the Shrink feature.
Running Shrink performs these actions:
- Removes unused disk blocks from your virtual hard disk and reduces (shrinks) the amount of storage space consumed by the virtual disk on your host operating system. Your virtual disk can still grow up to the maximum size for which it was originally created.
- Reorganizes your virtual disk so that its data blocks are contiguous. This provides better performance when the virtual machine accesses the disk.
- Converts older-format virtual disks to the new Workstation 3.0 format (if you run Shrink on a virtual disk from a previous Workstation release). You see this prompt only if you shrink a virtual disk created under a prior version of Workstation and are running the virtual disk under a new version of Workstation. If you choose to convert (upgrade) your virtual disk, you can no longer use that virtual disk with older versions of Workstation.
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:
- Double-click the VMware Tools icon (generally in the system tray at the end of the taskbar).
- Click the Shrink tab.
- Select the disk you want to shrink, and click Prepare to Shrink.
- Follow the on-screen instructions.
To shrink a virtual disk on a Linux guest operating system:
- Open VMware Tools. If it is not available, launch it by
running vmware-toolbox.
- Click the Shrink tab.
- Select the mount point for the disk you want to shrink, and click
Prepare to Shrink.
- Follow the on-screen instructions.
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