VMWare Workstation using up more disk space than it should

[alvinoo]

I am using the Ubuntu 16.04. The disk space allocated is 97.7gb

On the actual machine, the size is only 7gb.

The vmdk original file size is 8gb, after I just left it on over the weekend the virtual disk swell up to a size of 50gb.

df -hT shows about 8gb allocated.

[alvinoo]

For your info, snapshot has already been deleted.

I am using growable split storage as this was provided in the ova by default

[bluefirestorm]

Are you using encrypted file system/encrypted partition on either guest VM or host machine or both?

Encrypted files/partitions on either guest or host or both will likely keep on growing the VMDK as by definition an encrypted version of nulls (whether it is 1MB or 1GB) would not be null bytes and it should avoid re-using the same allocated space to avoid a detectable pattern. Usually, you would need to have nulls written into the file system of the virtual disk to be able to shrink it but encrypted file systems/partitions defies that requirement.

[alvinoo]

Hi there,

I managed to write with null byte.

The active disk for Rapid7VA grew from 2gb to 16gb.

Before i used the shrink command present in the vmware-vdiskmanager and the size went down from to 2gb again.

The question is: There are other Vmdk files, how can I shrink them?

Originally, it is just a single vmdk file only.

However

[RDPetruska]

It looks like you have AutoProtect enabled.  Try disabling it.

[alvinoo]

Hi there,

My AutoProtect was already disabled.

[alvinoo]

Hi there,

As of now I am still using this file.

The current size is 2.4gb

The hard disk allocated is 97.7gb.

However, the vmdk size is current about 50gb.

1) Is there a way to reduce the size of the hard disk allocation from 97.7gb to 30gb.

2) Is there a way to convert it to a pre-allocated hard disk of size to 30gb?

Alvin