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gorek
Contributor
Contributor

Shrink vmdk file

Hello!

Created virtual machine with 160GB virtual drive in Tin Provisioning mode and installed on it Windows 7 OS.

After installation I used VMware Client to browse my datastore and check *.vmdk file size. It was about 8GB, but when I downloaded the same *.vmdk file on my computer it's size was 160GB.

Why the file is so large after download? How shrink it to really used size (in this case about 8GB)?

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tomtom901
Commander
Commander

Because only VMware can use the thin disk in this way as a feature of the filesystem. To get a smaller disk, export the VM.

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Welcome to the Community,

thin provisioned virtual disks on ESXi hosts use features of the VMFS files system, which are not available on your local file system. That's why the .vmdk file expands to it's provisioned size when you download it. Instead of downloading the files, you could alternatively use e.g. VMware Converter or use the vmware-vdiskmanager command line utility to convert the already downloaded .vmdk file(s) to another format, e.g. the 2GB-Sparse format if you want to use the VM with VMware Workstation or Player.

André

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