Interrupt VM Cleanup gives Canceling Please wait

[MikeFromABQ]

In Fusion 11.5.7 under macOS 10.15.7 (Catalina) I have tried to use the Cleanup Virtual Machine (for a Windows 10 VM) process because it shows 24.9GB of reclaimable space.  This resulted in a progress bar that reached the end and stayed there for a few hours.  (It also shows 32GB of snapshots that I was not aware of and intended to address after the Cleanup.  Not sure why the Hard Disk Size is only 82.4GB and the Total Size is only 114.4GB.

After reading messages about this topic of problems with the Cleanup's "Reclaiming" step, I decided to try the Cancel option.  Now, I just get "Canceling. Please wait..." and the progress bar also is at the end (right end) which suggests it is complete.

The VMWAREVM file is 807GB for a 500GB guest drive on a 1TB host that has about 100GB of free space.  I do not have sufficient space on the host to regenerate the VM in one piece.  

Q1) Would VMWare have offered the "Cleanup Virtual Machine" and subsequent "Reclaim space" option when there was insufficient diskspace for that operation?

I do not know if this VM was set up as a single file but I suspect that it was because it was created a decade ago when that might have been the default.

All operations are compromised by the macOS UI being slow despite Activity Monitor only showing about 39% for VMWare Fusion as the only app consuming more than 10%.

Activity Monitor shows over 550GB data read but only 22GB written.

Q2) Is it safe to close the lid on this MacBook Pro 2016 while this "Please wait..." message is displayed.  I must travel tomorrow and will not have wall power for several hours and I doubt the battery will last long enough to continue the current activity for 8 hours.

Q3) Is it safe to use Force Quit on Fusion or will that damage the VM?

[wila]

Q1) Yes, it has done that to others in the past as well. There are probably some conditions under which it doesn't happen.

Q2) Might be, it is the only thing you can do. It is not that you have much choice anyways. I'm unsure if the cancel is able to undo the damage done, but if at all possible I would try to let it complete.

Q3) It will almost certainly damage the VM.

--
Wil

[MikeFromABQ]

Thanks for that info.

If I thought that I knew how long it would take, I could decide accordingly about letting the Cancel process continue to run.

As of now, Activity Monitor reports over 2.25TB of data being read and most of that is since the Cancel was started.  The guest disk is only 500GB and the VM package is about 800GB.  AM reports that it's only written 32GB in that time, so this is what makes me wonder if it would ever complete.

Q4) Do you have an opinion about whether any actual progress is being made in the Cancel process?

I have a full backup of the Windows VM from a couple of weeks ago, and all work since then has been backed up to multiple external devices and that includes some USB drives I have with me on the road.

Though I'd have to retrieve that 800GB VM package over the Internet, I can restore the old VM and then get things like Windows updates to make it current and restore from my USB drives.  But of course, it would be nice to avoid that if possible.

[wila]

Q4) I frankly have no idea. At the forum we only tend to hear the scenarios that lead to data corruption, less often if something like a cancel on a Cleanup operation that was going to fail worked.

If -after a full night of running- it has read over 2TB and very little write output then I'm not very optimistic about that.

At least you have multiple backups, so on that part you're way ahead of a lot of other users here.

Sounds like you might have to test the backups soon.

--
Wil

[MikeFromABQ]

Thanks for confirming what I figured the answer would be.

I have seldom restored the VM for the 500GB guest drive for Windows, but I recently did actually fire up the VM from an external drive just to see if it would work.  Of course it was slow, but it appeared to be all normal.  I realize that this means I am more fortunate than the average user you try to help. 

Of course, we cannot really rely on backups unless we regularly test the restore process and few people do that, even among the minority that make the backups.

The only significant downside of this now is that I will have to retrieve the 800GB package over the 'net because I didn't make a 2nd recent backup to a drive I brought with me.  Won't make that mistake again.