Reclaiming Recently Extended Disk Space - ESXi 4.1.0

[alestan3]

Hello Community,

I recently just extended the c drive VMDK file by 45 gigs on a production VM.  I do not need to commit the change (using diskpart) after all and want to reclaim that space; is there a way to do this without using VMware Convertor?

[a_p_]

There are not many options to reduce the disk size. Either you use Converter (which may not be what you want to do with additional virtual disks on the VM) or create an additional virtual disk for this VM with the old/required size and use a disk imaging tool which can be booted off a CD/ISO. Once the imaging is done, remove the newly created virtual disk from the VM and rename the vmdk files from the console (or SSH) using

vmkfstools -E original.vmdk temporary.vmdk

vmkfstools -E new.vmdk original.vmdk

If the VM powers on without issues you may delete the temporary.vmdk files.

André

[alestan3]

Thanks for the tip A.P.  I did't think there were too many options but for now I will keep the unused data there in case I need to extend it in the near future.