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TonyM716
Contributor
Contributor

Reduce disk size (vmdk files)

I have a Windows 2003 guest vm running on VMWare 6 Workstation with a 300 GB E: drive that is only utilizing about 10GB. When I navigate to the directory where the VM lives, I see the 300GB is split up into 150, 2GB VMDK files. Is there any way I can change this 300Gb to be 25GB for example? It's just such a waste of space. any help is appreciated

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IamTHEvilONE
Immortal
Immortal

TonyM716

power off the virtual machine, and use VMware Converter against it. In step 1 of the VMware Converter wizard, you can do the following:

Source type = other

Source Data = convert volumes and change size

- You can reduce the size of the particular volumes during this

- the attached picture is of the right step ... you just have to click the capacity part instead of what is highlighted

Step 2 for destination, make sure to pick Workstation 6.0 format and the options you want.

note: you'll need enough space for the entire new copy of the virtual machine

Regards,

EvilOne

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KevinG
Immortal
Immortal

If you are running on a Linux host, use vmware-vdiskmanager to convert a pre-allocated virtual disk into a growable virtual disk

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continuum
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Immortal

Add a 25 Gb disk to your VM.

Next boot the VM into a LiveCD with Ghost, Acronis or gparted or what ever you prefer.

Clone disk 0 into disk 1.

When done edit the VM again - remove disk0 and disk1 from the configuration.

Re-add disk1.

Boot the VM from harddisk and check if it worked.

If yes - you can delete the 150 x 2Gb files for disk0 from harddisk.

___________________________________

description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

TonyM716
Contributor
Contributor

So I'm wondering why I'd remove disk 0 AND 1 after i clone 0 to 1 using Acronis? Wouldnt i remove disk 0 only instead of 0 and 1 and then re-adding 1? not sure what this step is for. Please advise

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

That doesn't make a difference - only thing to care for is:

make sure that your newly cloned disk uses the same IDE - or SCSI-controller port.

So if the large disk now is connected as SCSI0:0 the cloned disk must be connected the same way before you start the VM the first time.

How you do that doesn't matter.

If you remove both disk from the hardware-editor and then re-add disk1 you don't need to edit the vmx-file itself.

___________________________________

description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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