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avoelp
Contributor
Contributor

Shrinking / compacting a virtual disk

What is the difference between compacting (from the Player's VM Settings menu) and shrinking (from the VMware Tools menu) a virtual disk?

I use Player 3.1 with a Windows XP Mode VM under Wiondows 7 64-bit. In this case, neither shrinking nor compacting appears to work:

  • On the Shrink tab of VMware Tools there is only a message that shrinking has been deactivated for this machine.

  • When I try to compact the machine from the Player's Hardware -> Utilities tab the compacting process starts but then aborts after a few seconds, showing the error message "One of the parameters supplied is invalid" (I am not aware of any parameters that can be supplied here ...).

Any suggestions?

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

To reduce the size of the vmdk-files you want to use shrink.

Compact only sorts the graintables but has no effect on size.

If shrink is disabled check:

if one of the vmdks has the nonpersistant flag set

if one of your vmdks is a physical disk

if you have snapshots

Best popst your vmx-file then we can check for you




___________________________________

VMX-parameters- WS FAQ -[ MOAcd|http://sanbarrow.com/moa241.html] - VMDK-Handbook


________________________________________________
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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avoelp
Contributor
Contributor

> Best popst your vmx-file then we can check for you

... to where?

Andreas

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

use the attach function




___________________________________

VMX-parameters- WS FAQ -[ MOAcd|http://sanbarrow.com/moa241.html] - VMDK-Handbook


________________________________________________
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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avoelp
Contributor
Contributor

... please find the .vmx file enclosed.

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

the vmx-file is ok

can you post the file "Windows XP Mode.vmdk" ?




___________________________________

VMX-parameters- WS FAQ -[ MOAcd|http://sanbarrow.com/moa241.html] - VMDK-Handbook


________________________________________________
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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avoelp
Contributor
Contributor

... not on the forum - the file size is >5 GB.

Is there anything else that I could look for in this file?

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

Ok - that answers that question ...

have a look at your vmx-file - it has this entry:

xpmode.enabled = "TRUE"

please set that to "false" and try again




___________________________________

VMX-parameters- WS FAQ -[ MOAcd|http://sanbarrow.com/moa241.html] - VMDK-Handbook


________________________________________________
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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avoelp
Contributor
Contributor

> have a look at your vmx-file - it has this entry:

> xpmode.enabled = "TRUE"

>

> please set that to "false" and try again

This does not change the message on the Shrink tab. However, it changes the behavior of the VM, as Windows now prompts me to perform an activation (adter all, this is an XP Mode machine ...).

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

sorry - I have no more ideas




___________________________________

VMX-parameters- WS FAQ -[ MOAcd|http://sanbarrow.com/moa241.html] - VMDK-Handbook


________________________________________________
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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avoelp
Contributor
Contributor

... thanks - anyway Smiley Wink

Just one thought from my side: could it be that Shrinking generally does not work with XP Mode VMs? I have another VM running with the same version of VMware Player, under the same host OS, but with a retail version of XP Prof. installed (I just put my entire old PC environment into a VM), and there the option for Shrinking is available ...

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Nelro
Contributor
Contributor

What is the difference between compacting (from the Player's VM Settings menu) and shrinking (from the VMware Tools menu) a virtual disk?

I use Player 3.1 with a Windows XP Mode VM under Wiondows 7 64-bit. In this case, neither shrinking nor compacting appears to work:

  • On the Shrink tab of VMware Tools there is only a message that shrinking has been deactivated for this machine.

  • When I try to compact the machine from the Player's Hardware -> Utilities tab the compacting process starts but then aborts after a few seconds, showing the error message "One of the parameters supplied is invalid" (I am not aware of any parameters that can be supplied here ...).

Any suggestions?

Hello!

I have same problem.

>The shrink feature is not enabled for a virtual machine if any of its virtual disks are

>* • Preallocated when created

>* • Not used in independent-persistent mode

>* • Legacy disks that are not in persistent mode

>* • Booted as independent disks

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EricTh
Contributor
Contributor

I have managed to do this, or at least work around the problem.

I had the same issue with an XP Mode VM. I made a full clone of it - which was just as big. But I was allowed to shrink that successfully so I simply deleted the original (well, actually I moved it off to a backup disk just in case anything went wrong.)

I did a comparison of the VM configuration files in the original and the clone:

  • The .vmsd file of the original contained some entries although I had deleted all snapshots, The clone version was empty. Emptying the original to match the clone did not fix the shrink issue.
  • The .vmxd had a different VM id for the clone - which seems sensible - otherwise it was the same (though in a slighlty different order.) I did not try setting the orginal to match the clone.
  • The clone .vmx file had four extra entries at the end, three of which were empty parameters. One specified the new name for the nvram file. The other differences were the bios uuid, the ethernet address and the vdmk file name. I renamed the original nvram file to match that used by the clone (the content of the files was identical) and copied across the .vmx file changes (except the changed vdmk file name). The original VM still worked - but continued to have the shrink option disabled.

So I am pretty sure that it is something in the .vdmk file that prevent use of shrink. Making a clone seems a reasonably easy work around if you have the disk space.

The Compact disk option also works without error on the clone, but not on the original.

VMWare Workstation 7.1.4 - though the VM was created in an earlier version.

Eric

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WoodyZ
Immortal
Immortal

So I am pretty sure that it is something in the .vdmk file that prevent use of shrink.

A WinXP Mode VM is a Linked Clone and that is why you cannot shrink or compact it unless you create a Full Clone of it.

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EricTh
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for the explanation - I had not realised that it was a clever linked clone of a non-VMware parent. I guess the fact that it is a rather non-standard linked clone may explain why the Compact option fails when it normally works on a linked clone (though its effect is probably not what most people are trying to achieve.)

A new XPMode import is only about 70 MB, but a full clone of that is well over 1 GB. So there is no point in doing a full clone of a machine to save less than 1 GB of space with shrink. In my case it save 15 GB so it was helpful.

Eric

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Nelro
Contributor
Contributor

WoodyZ wrote:

So I am pretty sure that it is something in the .vdmk file that prevent use of shrink.

A WinXP Mode VM is a Linked Clone and that is why you cannot shrink or compact it unless you create a Full Clone of it.

And there is no free way to do that?

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WoodyZ
Immortal
Immortal

And there is no free way to do that?

Free way to do what, create a full clone of the WinXP Mode VM?  Yeah there is a free was to create a full clone but once you do that and run it you'll have to reactivate Windows and it might fail under the circumstance.   Also it probably violates the Microsoft EULA so I'm not going to address it further.

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Anatol56
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,
I Try the VMware Workstation 11 before i was using 10.04, so my host Systems are Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit and Windows 7 64-Bit so i install the new Version of VMware 11 on both systems and after i used view days i like to Compact an Guest OS witch was a Ubuntu 14.10 64-bit i user sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/0bits bs=20971520 # bs=20m
in the Guest OS to free unused diskspace and then delete the 0bits file with sudo rm /0bits.
the powerd off the VM and go to Options / Harddisk and use the Compact funktion after 5 Seconds it says the Disk was successfully compacted but when i watch on the size still was and will be 65GB so it does nothing!

So i check a cuople of things to get sure its not the Filesystem itself (i mean bad sectors on the Real Harddrive) but this is all ok no errrors where found and anything other works fine.
So i Uninstall the VMware 11 and Reinstall the 10.04 Version and again Compacting this VMDK and after doing it with Vmware 10.04 the size is only 3.6GB so in my Point i think theres a Problem with VMware 11.

Can anyone out there reproduce or got the same Problems?

By the way, i also try to Compact the disk on The Windows 7 Host with VMware 11 and 10 and its the same problem vmware 11 dose not working but vmware 10 Compacts fine.

Here are some Data about the system im Working on:

AMD 4x 3,6 GHz

8GB Ram

2 Hard drives 1. 500Gb for the Systems

and 2. 1TB As Data/Work Drive the Working Drive is Formatet on NTFS.
(I also try to shrink the VMDK on a Ext4 Partition and it is not Working! Only with the VMware Version 10.04 it still Compact the VMDK)

So in that Case Can you help me or tell me what im Doing wrong?

Greetz Anatol

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DavidWoodward
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Anatol56, I found a work around for the WS11 and Player 7 bug.

The VDDK has an application that shrinks and defragments virtual disks.

Shrink/Compact command:  vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -k "<path to vmdk>"

Defrag command: vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -d "<path to vmdk>"

https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/get-download?downloadGroup=VDDK55U2

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