Reducing vmdk file size. Note that you cannot compact fixed virtual hard disks.

Reducing vmdk file size vdi images but it is not possible with . vmdk ) files. VMware stores virtual disk files typically with a . When you delete files, the deleted data is still stored on the disk so VirtualBox can't automatically shrink the drive. . Detailed steps Shrink a VMware Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) – virtualman V2V has its own pros and cons, check in above link and its on you which way you want to do with. vmdk file created by VMware Workstation for Mac OS X Operating Systems, preventing it to continuously grow as time passes by and recovering the disk space on the hosting machine. In my case it was 40GB disk assigned and hence the value was 83886080. May 23, 2020 · I have a VM with a 42 GB hard disk (format raw, zfs file system) which I'd like to reduce to 32 GB. It is then easier to upload and share them with other people. Set the new size of the virtual disk using a text editor. Jul 13, 2017 · VMware will compact the underlying virtual hard disk (. If you're concerned that the virtual disk will grow larger than you want, reducing the size of the partitions would be sufficient. Shutdown then reduce the size of VMDK. Usually, you don't need a maintenance window for that. If all went well you should now have a smaller VMDK file and newly reclaimed space! If you do this on the parent image of a View Pool the changes won’t be “pushed” out to the VM’s within the Pool until your next recompose. Reduce VMDK and shrink VMDK. But we can compact . vmdk. Sep 12, 2025 · For example, in Windows GuestOS use Disk Management tool. vmdk and sdcard. vmdk and the *-flat. svmotion the vm to forth and back then VM properties now May 6, 2025 · The file used here is descriptor file . vmdk my-disk1. You can't do this while a virtual machine is powered on or suspended. vmdk The size of the vmdk disk is shown in the #Extent description section. cut down the flat. We also attempted to redefine the capacity of the VMDK in the old OVF file and then upload it. vmdk file not the data file -flat. vmdk) files to free up space. Dec 8, 2020 · vmdk file stores all the data of a virtual machine’s hard drive. Enter a size to reduce the OS partition. Jan 23, 2024 · VMDK, which stands for Virtual Machine Disk, is one file format, which is used to describe the containers for virtual hard disk drives. Anyone know how to clean this, other than full uninstall of NOX ? Jan 19, 2025 · Understanding Virtual Disks in VMware Workstation Before diving into the reduction process, it’s essential to understand what virtual disks are and how they work in VMware Workstation. I'm aware there's a way to shrink the vmdk size when thin provision is used, by zeroing the free space, defragmenting, and then reducing the size, but this is a different beast. Quite often users want to know that how to reduce virtual machine disk size. vmdk files now, even though according to the app list there's only maybe 2GB data of currently-installed games in total. 2. Note: Always ensure you have a full backup of the VM or at least the disk in question before attempting a shrink. Dec 4, 2018 · VMware is bad at shrinking Linux VMs when space is freed up. I want to reduce the vmdk by 10 GB so after the shrink vmdk size should be 30GB. tried… Mar 8, 2025 · I have a vm running on vmware workstation. I would recommend to use VirtualBox to do the conversion. So for 30 GB, use the below mentioned calculation 30 (1024*1024*1024)/512 = 62914560 and save the file. One of the major reasons to shrink VMDK size is that it Oct 15, 2024 · It doesn’t reduce the size of the VMDK file but optimizes data layout to improve performance. 39 x 1024) Follow the rest of the instructions in the link above to change the VMDK info in SSH to the new matching value. adjust the size in the vmdk descriptor 5. v Got it. Here, we will per­form an ac­tion to re­duce the disk size on VMWare ESXi us­ing the com­mand line. I only have *. Read on to learn more. tried… Jun 1, 2023 · How to compact virtual hard disks in Hyper-V Unlike shrinking, the compact operation doesn’t reduce the storage capacity of the virtual hard disk. Mar 18, 2018 · How to effectively reduce the file size of a Mac OS X . How To Shrink VMware Virtual Disk Files (. Oct 13, 2016 · Reduce size vmdk file by Soidem123 » 13. Mar 20, 2017 · The process is similar to what I did on Windows and Linux i. 7 does not seem to provide an option to shrink or reduce the VMDK size during export. I cannot use VMware Converter because I need to perform the process in background. Anyone help me. After that it comes down to how the OS is set up on the imported disk. vmdk disk images. The size of the exported OVA/OVF is usually much > As a user of ovftool (and VMware Studio), I want the generated OVF to be as small as possible. It covers partition shrinking, zeroing free space, manual edits, automation tools, and troubleshooting tips. It is not so obvious. I will recommend to employ defragmentation of your VMs if you notice your virtual machine are getting slower performance wise due to disk fragmentation. Check before size by running du -h VM_Name-flat. vmdk file (not the -flat. Oct 2016, 17:28 Hello, can you help me Reduce size vmdk file. 400 MB. vmdk Run vmkfstools -K VM_Name. How to optimize and shrink virtual disks. Aug 6, 2019 · vmkfstools --punchzero [DISK]. The guide is easy to follow but caution should be exercised and backups should be made before proceeding with the steps. The unpartitioned areas won't be written to and therefore will not lead to additional growth of the . VMDK): 1. Reducing the size of the VMware Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) with desctripter file on esxi host. Feb 24, 2016 · The above dialogue will briefly appear whilst the file system is queried. There's like 10GB data in the data. vmdk) using the cat command: # cat test_vm_3. Extending a virtual disk with VMware Fusion is a piece of cake, but shrinking one (and by shrinking I mean reducing the maximum size of… Jan 10, 2021 · Good evening, I have a vSphere Client version 6. vmdk) file so that it reflects the actual usage of the virtual machine. Jan 30, 2025 · VMware PowerCLI (VMware’s PowerShell module) allows us to manipulate VMDK files and VM configuration, and by combining that with in-guest partition resizing, we can safely reduce a VM’s virtual disk size without losing data. Nov 8, 2023 · Reducing VMDK file size not only helps improve VM performance but also prevents unnecessary data loss and improves storage efficiency. Thick Provisioning: Allocates all required disk space at the Apr 20, 2021 · To reduce the VMDK disk from 80 to 40 GB, we have to specify 83886080 in the Extent description section. I don't actually need them to work, just need the 4 separate files with roughly Mar 21, 2014 · I know I cannot shrink a Thin provisioned drive and everything I’ve read says use the VM Converter and it requires a downtime. I'm always looking to Mentor, potential new VMware vExperts - Message Me ! Part 15: HOW TO: Shrink or Reduce a VMware Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) using VMware vCenter Converter Standalone v6. vmdk) associated with a VM. vdi compact convert back to . Non operating system disks users can also add a new smaller VMDK to the virtual machine and copy the data between the larger and new smaller disk using tools within the guest such as Robocopy. How can I compact/compress this hugo *. Dec 31, 2009 · I have a VM with Ubuntu as guestOS where the *. Yes it is possible the reduce the size of the vm in VMware server, if you have a situation the disk space for the vm has been reserved without thin provision, and the vm has lots of disk space unused. Mar 8, 2025 · I have a vm running on vmware workstation. Tools Needed I’d recommend VMWare Workstation Pro, but you can get away with just using player if you don’t have a license. resize the partition inside the guest 2. vmdk and reclaim space (the example is specific for VMWare Fusion). power off the guest 3. Specify the new size, save the changes and close the file. mf) file so the checksums don't fail, then edit the . vmdk) of your VirtualBox virtual machines so they consume less disk space. 0 Author: Falko Timme This guide shows how you can shrink the virtual disk files (they have the extension . Each virtual disk can be either a thick-provisioned or thin-provisioned disk. So the remaining allocated space in the *. Mar 20, 2025 · Problem: We need to export VMDK with only the 22 GB of actual data, but VMware ESXi 6. Its currently taking up over 50GB and I just deletect 35GB of data on this virtualbox, but since the hard drive is Dynamically allocated the vmdk file is still its original huge size. Unlike expanding a disk of a VMWare virtual machine you can do on-the-fly without shutting the virtual machine down, it is more complicated to reduce the size of a vmdk file on the VMWare ESXi hypervisor, and you cannot do it via the vSphere Web Client graphical Apr 13, 2012 · A thin provisioned vmdk does not reduce its size all by itself. Jul 14, 2015 · From help file, about to [--resize x] option: This currently works only for VDI and VHD formats, and only for the dynamically allocated variants, and can only be used to expand (not shrink) the capacity. This isn't the cause of your low storage on the host. Thanks. vmdk from growable to preallocated : vmware-vdiskmanager -r current_disk_name. vmdk file (s) is (meanwhile approx 2-3 GB). I am aware that some You can reclaim free space on Windows PC by reducing the size of virtual disks. vmdk extension. Mar 9, 2025 · I have a vm running on vmware workstation. How to use VMware converter to make VMDK smaller Sep 23, 2019 · When you need to reduce the size of a VMDK with Converter you only run Converter against the vmdk - that means you pretend to convert the VM but actually throw away the new vmx-file and just replace the resized vmdk. I've run out of space on a virtual machine disk which is a vmdk and need to resize the virtual image. For example, we had a virtual machine that required 1000GB disk space… Dec 6, 2021 · In order to reduce the size of the VMDK file on the VMWare VMFS file system, our Support Techs suggests the following steps: Initially, we shut down the virtual machine we want to reduce disk size. May 26, 2016 · Once you have consolidated files to front of disk (MyDefrag is a freeware tool that provides a display of where on disk your files are), you must reduce the size of your Windows partition. e. Over time a guest's *. vmdk file size? So after uninstalling some games on NOX, i've noticed nothing changed in the disk size where emulator is installed. But what if you need to shrink the disk. vmdk If you wish to change the size of the disk, this should be done while the disk is still in growable format (examples here). vmdk) just the . Cannot use converter standalone due to disabled option. Apr 3, 2019 · 1. I do not know a single system where you do not have at least 10GB of free space for OS disks. In the ESXi console, run the following commands: cp vmname. vmdk backup_vmname. VMware Player does not support snapshots, so you won't have any snapshots taking up additional space on your computer. To Increase the size of a virtual disk (. Note that you're checking size of 'flat' file but running the tools against vmdk. But even though I already did that, the VMDK data doesn't decrease. Jul 31, 2012 · Let’s check the VMDK file size by browsing the virtual machine directory and type ls -l. Jan 24, 2024 · As mentioned in the title, I need to split large . Convert (a copy of) the VMDK file to either VHD or VDI format and then convert it back to VMDK. Just grow VMDK disk on VMware and then on the operating system. vmdk file which contains a Database into several smaller (4) ones. (Don't install VirtualBox on the same computer as VMWare! They may conflict. but after deleting files from guest os also the vmdk file size does not reduce. To give you an idea, data occupied 500 GB vmdk file size 1500 GB. Here we will show you three ways to shrink virtual machine disk (vmdk) size in VMware. This often leads to much smaller file in my experience. What is an easy way to compact / shrink this vmdk file? I'm on Windows 10 as host. vmdk cp vmname-flat. Oct 14, 2009 · Reduce size of VMDK file Kevin_Hamilton Oct 14, 2009 09:35 AM Hello all, I have a VM that has just had a disk increased from 150Gb to 250Gb in retrospect it has been 1. Change the disk to thin and support in-guest unmap to ensure the size of the vmdk is only as big as the used space on the OS. Feb 6, 2014 · In this example the VMware virtual machine disk (VMDK) is 40GB, and we would like to reduce the size of the VMware virtual machine disk (VMDK) to 20GB. Any suggestions on shrinking the VMDK or cloning contents from one VMDK to a smaller VMDK would be much appreciated. PS. 2GB in 5/9/2016 3GB in 13/10/2016 I don't want lose all my data. Make sure you reduce the size of the partitions in the virtual machine before shrinking the vmdk file, and you probably want to run a file system repair afterwards, just in case. Apr 22, 2021 · In order to reduce the size of the VMDK file on the VMWare VMFS file system, our Support Techs suggests the following steps: Initially, we shut down the virtual machine we want to reduce disk size. With this tool, users can enjoy a smoother and more efficient experience on their Windows VMs. This is used in virtual machines like VMware Workstation or VirtualBox. boot the VM with a Linux LiveCD that can rebuild the GPT-backup at the end of the disk 6. Dec 18, 2019 · I deleted the snapshot, which was the 2 files with the filename of Converted Windows 7-000001. vmdk The process may take longer depending on the size of the disk and number of blocks. Jan 16, 2020 · How big should my VMDKs be on vSAN? We cover VMDK size best practices with vSAN in this informative blog post. Hello, How to reduce the disk size of a linux vm disk on esxi/vcenter? I've a 100GB thin disk with 15GB of space occupied and I want to reduce size on vmdk to 40GB. Feb 23, 2019 · Is there a procedure for shrinking a preallocated VMDK? I have of course considered creating a new VM from scratch at the correct size, but there is too much going on on the VM for the option to be feasible. 0. ) Instructions on shrinking and reducing the size of LDPlayer instances (or any emulator that uses vmdk). vmdk -t 3 new_disk_name. Shrink the partition size within the guest OS; Reduce the size of a VMware virtual machine’s VMDK file on VMFS (NFS) datastore. Any advise? Thank you Jan 18, 2018 · I am not trying to reduce the size of the drive, just wondering why backup size or vmdk file size has not changed even though the drive is empty now Sep 11, 2017 · The first step in reducing the size of the image is to power on the virtual machine, log into the operating system and clean up anything you can there. And when I install new apps, the data size just keeps increasing. So either you are witness of I have seen - repeatedly - similar results. As you may know Ubunto itself needs only approx. In fact, the size of the VMDK file may increase slightly due to the reorganization of data blocks. vmdk files of the virtual hard disk you want to shrink. VMware develops it for its virtual appliance products. But, when you write zeros over the deleted files, VirtualBox will see a large amount of zeroes---empty space, in other words---and be able to compact the Aug 7, 2014 · Increasing the size of a VMware Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) is straightforward, and is supported in the vSphere Client, by selecting the virtual hard disk, and increasing the size using the up arrow icon or typing in a new value. 3 : preallocated virtual disk split in 2Gb files The following command will convert the . vmdk with a dd-command 4. vmdk, and now the vm won’t start. vmdk --resize 30720 gives the err If you want to reduce the disk size you could either use VMware converter to copy the VM and resize the disks at the same time or create a new smaller virtual disk and copy the data over to it. I have numerous virtual machines, but I note that the size of the vmdk file inside the storega is much higher than the space occupied by the data inside the windows virtual machine. 42000 framework. Please see my previous Experts Exchange article and screenshot below: HOW TO: Resize a VMware (VMDK) Virtual Disk Jan 23, 2019 · Login to the Virtual Machine and shrink the Partition you want at windows level with disk management. In order to shrink the *. vdmk is over 20 GB now) I even tried the internal Nox cleanup option, but it only removed about 10 MB. vdi then applied the compact command, but the vdi size didn't change at all. In this example the VMware virtual machine disk (VMDK) is 40GB, and we would like to reduce the size of the VMware virtual machine disk (VMDK) to 20GB. vmdk extension). Apr 26, 2022 · How can I reduce the Virtual Disk Size at VMware without losing/impacting on data? How to check if the Virtual Disk is Thin or Thick? if it is Thin, maybe I don’t need to bother since it won’t occupy physical space from VMware if it didn’t used right? Jul 5, 2023 · To shrink the size of a VMDK virtual disk on VMWare ESXi using the command line. I have deleted some files from the guest OS to reduce the VMDK file size on the Host OS. vmdk) Version 1. Shrink the partition residing within a disk before reducing the size of a virtual disk. I’ve already shrunk the volume in the OS. I originally tried removing the snapshot through the snapshot manager and it didn’t do anything. Also, I would shrink the Volume inside windows smaller than you want at first, then go through theses steps to clone to a DISK of your desired size then go back en and expand the volume Jul 8, 2022 · So, in order to make your virtual machines use less disk space, this article describes how to shrink (compact) the virtual disk files (files with . I wanted to know if I used Storage vMotion and moved this and changed it to a Thick provisioned disk would I then be able to shrink the VMDK file? I realize this would still cause a downtime but it should be relatively quick. This means uninstalling applications you no longer need, deleting files and running disk cleanup with the option to scan system files to remove previous installations of Windows. vmdk Once complete, again check the size by repeating step 2. Jul 5, 2023 · How to Shrink VMDK Virtual Disk Size on VMWare ESXi vmdk-shrink. qcow2 files you've two How do I reduce the . Jun 28, 2017 · After the defragmentation process is finished, you will need to write zeros to the empty space inside the virtual machine. Since it's a sparse disk, reducing the maximum capacity of the virtual disk won't really do anything. VMware uses the term "shrink" to refer to reducing the underlying size of the disk available to the guest, and "thinning" as the process most tend to use of recapturing unused space without altering the underlying Sep 19, 2017 · 2. (. 2. Mar 7, 2025 · Software & ApplicationsVirtualization vmware, virtualization, data-storage, question spiceuser-j009 (spiceuser-j009) March 7, 2025, 6:39pm 1 I have a vm running on vmware workstation. Jun 23, 2020 · The server that I would be V2Ving to reduce the size also has the separate 6TB drive that is used for workstation backups… I don’t have the disk space to be able to copy this VMDK and duplicate it. To reduce the VMDK disk from 80 to 40 GB, we have to specify 83886080 in the Extent description section. vmdk which is a text file you will be editing. the above dialogue will appear. vmdk files, so I first converted to vdi with VBoxManage clonehd --format VDI my-disk1. reboot the VM For many users step 3 is too scary - so they rather do not use this approach. vmdk) of your VMware virtual machines so that if you zip them, they will use much less space. vmdk files on the host. My additional suggestions would be to first make a backup copy of the . It is more flexible in its conversion options than VMWare. write a null file that is erased at the end then use the command-line tools to compact the . Note that you cannot compact fixed virtual hard disks. Right click on the virtual machine and select "Edit Settings". This was tested on a Windows 10 VM managed by VirtualBox, the starting file size was over 40GB, as it had been used for various roles and grown over time. I have no snaptshots and the disks are in think mode. At this point, you can use dd to copy the now smaller partition to a new vdi. tried… Mar 26, 2018 · My question (reduce the used space after deeleting files inside a thin VMDK disk) is related to either Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows server 2012 R2 VMs. Most of the articles I've found so far on "shrinking" are about optimizing and compressing a VMDK file, which is not what I want, I want to reduce the "maximum size" of the VMDK. I thought I could use parted to reduce the partition on the VM first and then decrease the PVE size but I'm struggling to find a method to do this? Is there any method / documentation available? Hi, recently I deleted and uninstalled a couple of apps I don't play anymore on LD Player. Reduce size of VMDK file If it is windows VM then you can easily shrink the size of the disk within windows. If you have external storage, normally you can get away without actually decreasing the size of the disk. Mar 31, 2015 · Hi,Every time that i export a VM machine to an OVF file it seems that the file is too big. If you instruct the New Virtual Machine wizard to create a new virtual disk during a custom configuration, the wizard prompts you to set the size of the virtual disk and specify whether to split the disk into multiple virtual disk ( . My vmdk file is getting bigger. It keeps bloating itself. VMware Fusion In VMware Fusion, first power down a virtual machine. Here are the primary reasons to consider shrinking your VMware VM: Before you can reduce the size of the virtual disk on the VMWare ESXi datastore: Delete all virtual machine snapshots; Backup the virtual machine, or at least make a copy of the *. May 1, 2022 · If you use VMware Workstation for your virtualization platform, you might have noticed that the size of your virtual disk files (VMDK) are getting to be larger than they should be and maybe even I need those 50GB for another VM's and I'd love to find a way to find a way to reduce the vmdk-flat file size. Mar 22, 2024 · In this article, we will look at how to reduce the size of a virtual machine’s hard disk (VMDK) in VMware ESXi. Jul 4, 2018 · Disk files (like VDI and VMDK images) will grow over time if the VM was configured to expand the disk as needed - but they will never shrink on their own. Feb 4, 2015 · VirtualBox is able to compact (reduce the size) of . vmdk backup_vmname-flat. This VMWare knowledge base article explains how to shrink a vmdk file. This post tells the step by step procedure to shrink or resize the VMDK using VMware vCenter Converter Standalone. vmdk a) to the current absolute necessary space b) to the necessary space plus extra 200 MB ? Ok, I knwo, that would mean if the VM needs more space in In this article we will show how to reduce the size of a virtual disk (vmdk) file of the virtual machine running on VMWare ESXi. Jul 30, 2022 · This goes over reducing the size of a VMDK file using open-vm-tools and is used often in VMWare environments. Thanks Potentially you can unpack the ova to a OVF folder, delete the manifest (. qcow2 disk files can grow larger than the actual data stored within them, this happens because the Guest OS normally only marks a deleted File as zero, it doesn't gets actually deleted (performance reasons), so the underlying qcow2 file cannot differentiate between allocated and used and allocated but not used storage. The size of the disks can be reduced, but for this they need to be converted from VMDK to VDI. How can resize the size of a VMDK file? Thank. From the vSphere Client GUI, you cannot reduce… Jul 16, 2025 · This post describes how to shrink VMDK files in VMware using five methods. 3. png Overview Ex­pand­ing the ca­pac­ity of VM disks is easy, but shrink­ing their size is not straight­for­ward on VMWare ESXi GUI. I don't have the link now, but I have used the method where you login to ESXi server, and use the CLI commands (I think it was "vmkfstools"?) to basically make a new copy of 2 files, other was Aug 2, 2012 · In My Previous Post , I have explained how to Resize VMDK using Vmkfstools and also how to extend C: drive using extpart utility. Thinning (shrinking) VMDK disks on ESXi / vSphere Linux Guests Note: "Shrinking" is often used interchangeably to refer to the process of reducing the size of a thin-type disk file. Shutdown the virtual machine. Oct 31, 2016 · Reduce VMDK size - the easiest method is to use VMware converter standalone to shrink VMDK disk files. This action reduces the file size of a virtual hard disk by removing empty blocks from the file. Jan 18, 2023 · That means our new size was 767384 (749. Nov 24, 2014 · Howto Shrink a Thin Provisioned Virtual Disk (VMDK) by Florian Grehl November 24, 2014 26 Comments Thin provisioned disks are a great feature to save capacity as you virtual machines filesystem will never use the full capacity. The Disk Management utility scans the available file system, and reports a maximum size the OS partition can be reduce by, this is based on current file system usage. Resizing with the command vboxmanage modifyhd Machine-disk1. - badjtsx/ShrinkLDPlayer This guide explains how to shrink (compact) the virtual disk files (files having extension . Note the size of VMDK size is expanded to 20 GB and disk size appearing above in bytes We display the contents of the virtual disk configuration file (*. I used the diskpart tool with the shrink option. VMWARE & ESXI @vmware @VMwarevSphere @VMwareLearning Aug 21, 2018 · 3 I have a very old virtual box with ubuntu 14 guest installed. vmdk is empty. Jan 10, 2025 · Why Shrink a VMware Virtual Machine? Shrinking a virtual machine refers to the process of reducing the size of the virtual disk file (. vmdk files if we: detach convert to . How do I decrease the maximum size of a VMware VMDK hard disk? I want the disk to appear as the specified size to the guest OS. vmdk Reducing the Nov 16, 2024 · This article provides steps to reduce the size of a virtual disk (. I would like to know how can i to reduce the size of the file becaus Reduce the VMDK File Size of the VMWare Virtual Machine Shut down the virtual machine you want to reduce disk size; Using SSH, connect to the console of the ESXi host the VM is registered on (you can use putty or the built-in Windows SSH client); Go the directory the VMDK file of your VM is located in (you can get a path to it in the virtual disk properties of the vSphere client): $ cd /vmfs Mar 15, 2019 · Have you ever built a VM and went a bit nuts in terms of the initial maximum size you allocated to the VMDK? Something like this? I know I have. NOTE: Once you have changed the size of the VM in the Guest OS (Windows here) and the VMWare datastore via SSH, you will need to modify the “Provisioned Space”. ovf file in a text editor to shrink the disk size. From the down arrow key, go to the line containing the disk size. 1. 7. Feb 16, 2021 · Extending a virtual disk is a common task. Mar 1, 2013 · Under extent description replace value between RW _ _ _ _ _ VMFS *-flat. acd alig dvpmoo ufcc tyrni fbiij pyxyw cpjeaaki roeni epcpdo jaunqsjw iif petw wvjeg tdggn