unable to recover unused space using vmkfstools

[nettech1]

I have a Windows XP VM which had a thick provisioned 20GB HDD with only 10GB being used. With the VM powered off I ran vmkfstools -i XPTICK.vmdk -d thin XPTHIN.vmdk and ended up with a thin provisioned disk, which shows 19,827,710 as Size and 20,971,520 as Provisioned Size. When I power up the VM, it’s showing 10 of HDD space being used. Is there another way to recover the unused space? ESXi5.5 U2  standalone Thank you

[a_p_]

Did you cleanup the guest OS prior to run vmkfstools, i.e. did you defragment the guest OS and zero out unused disk space?

André

[nettech1]

I defragmented the drive, but didn't zero it out. What tool should be used for that?

-K --punchzero ?

Thanks

[a_p_]

You need a tool that writes zeroes within the guest OS's filesystem itself. A well known tool for this is SDelete.

After zeroing out the guest file system, you may then use vmkfstools with the --punchzero option to reclaim the zeroed disk space.

André

[nettech1]

Thank you.

can I run vmkfstools  --punchzero XPTHIN.vmdk  once SDelete finishes or I need to run through a conversion one more time?

[a_p_]

The --punchzero option is made for thin provisioned virtual disks, so you should be able to reclaim the disk space using the command after zeroing out the guest. However, don't expect a reduction all the way down to the guest's used disk space. Defragmenting will help, but may not reorganize/relocate files on the virtual disk.

André

[nettech1]

I ran SDelete inside the guest OS and then  vmkfstools --punchzero thin.vmdk
no space recovered

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

If zeroing the free disk space (sdelete with the -z option) didn't cleanup enough free adjacent clusters, i.e. the data on the virtual file system is spread across the partition, there's unfortunately not much vmkfstools can do. In such a case you may need to use e.g. VMware Converter and run a Volume Based (Advanced options) V2V conversion.

André