I have just switched from Parallels to VMware's Fusion. I used the Beta transfer program to move my Win XP OS and programs over and then uninstalled Parallels. I find Fusion much more to my liking and am pleased with how it works overall. When I tried to use the shrink feature I got an error message about not having enough free space to do so. I then looked at my Mac's hard drive and found that I only have 1.24 GB of free space (out of 74GB on an 80GB hard drive) available. Prior to moving from Parallels I had over 30GB of free space available. This is a MacBook 2.0 with 2GB of memory.
I have been looking at the folders on my hard drive and the largest are:
Library at 9.35 GB
Users at 33.84 GB
WinXP.hdd at 18.57 GB
System 1.9 GB
The remainder are 1 GB or less
Is this fairly normal with respect to the amount of space used? Is my only option to get a larger hard drive? I only use Win XP for 3 programs at this point. Is it possible for me to shrink XP or somehow is it possible I have duplicate files in my Users folder?
I am very much new to both Fusion and to the Mac OS, any help greatly appreciated.
You won't be able to shrink the VMware virtual machine without more free space. To figure out where it's going, try something like Grand Perspective.
The sizes you quote seem reasonable for /System and /Library, /Users will of course vary wildly between computers. Where's WinXP.hdd from? I don't think that's a Fusion file, is it left over from your Parallels virtual machine?
once
you Import the Parallels VM to VMware Fusion it will create new virtual machine
so it think your Parallels Virtual machine is still on your Hard drive if you
are not using it you can move that VM to external HDD to create the free space
on Host Mac
That's what I had hoped. I must admit I have no idea how to move the Parallels VM. Actually I don't need it anymore so I'd be happy to just get rid of it. How do I go about doing that without removing my Fusion virtual machine? Thanks for the help.
you can see the Parallels VM in /Users/User Name/Documents/Virtual machine/Parallels/<Virtual machine name>
There is nothing in that folder other than the VMFusion VM file. I looked in the Finder and dragged everything named Parallels to the trash, still have bout the same mount of space (or lack thereof). Any other suggestions?
Thanks
I thought Parallels kept their virtual machines in /Users/yourusername/Library/Parallels/?
The original Parallels installed virtual machines in ~/Library/Parallels/... but newer versions install them in ~/Documents/Parallels/... Unless you update Parallels over an older install in which case you may find you have a bit of chaos.
You won't be able to shrink the VMware virtual machine without more free space. To figure out where it's going, try something like Grand Perspective.
The sizes you quote seem reasonable for /System and /Library, /Users will of course vary wildly between computers. Where's WinXP.hdd from? I don't think that's a Fusion file, is it left over from your Parallels virtual machine?
THANK YOU!!!
You hit the nail on the head. It was the WinXP.hdd file that was eating up nearly 20GB's of space and was not part of Fusion. I now have 20GB of free space and am much relieved. Now maybe I can shrink Fusion and take a Snapshot. Wow, do I have a lot to learn.
Again, thanks to everyone.