Multiple Windows XP Professional-0000xx.vmdk files - in fact 83 of them - VM size is over 156GB !!! Help needed

[IrlRiku]

Hello,

I have rapidly run out of disk space to the point where i have only 3.5GB remaining.

Using vdiskmanager GUI I can see that there are 83 instances of Windows Proffessional-000xx.vmdk files.

They range in size from 40MB to 8GB - Can it be possible that all of these are necessary.

Finder reports that the Windows XP Professional VMWare Virtual Machine is taking up 156.65GB

How can I free up disk space?

And how can I prevent this from happening again?

Other information that might be relevant...

There is one Windows XP Professional.vmdk file

There are 2 Windows Professional-Snapshotxxxx.vmem files

There are 2 Windows Professional-Snapshotxxxx.vmsn files

Richard

[r_lam]

Remove snapshots that are for example older than a week, this will clean up the datastore.

[mnasir]

Hi,

I wouldn’t recommend deleting anything manually from the data store within the xXP vm container. As the other user suggested - delete your snap shots. Also, if you are not using the disk space in your XP vm, then you can use VMware converter to shrink you vmdk files and release the unused space.

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[IrlRiku]

Appreciate your response.

I have only daily snapshots. So I'm not sure that your suggestion will achieve anything significant as I have only two snapshots as mentioned earlier.

[IrlRiku]

I'm pretty sure that you know what your talking about but unfortunately I'm not on your wavelength - yet.

I have disabled snapshots in the AutoProtect area of Settings. Does that action delete the snapshots?

What have these 83 vmdk files to do with snapshots?

VMware converter? Where is that to be found?

Within XP the available space is 41.9GB

I have disabled the snapshot and restarted Fusion.

The VM machine size has only got smaller by 3GB.

When the snapshot was deleted - I got a message "Unable to clean up deleted files. The specified disk needs repair.

Shrink is diabled.

I seem to be in a circle - unable to do anything to free up the host machines disk space.

Heelllp

[IrlRiku]

I was unable to reduce the size of the VM. So just recently I installed Win7 as a new VM. I was able to transfer all relevant user data from Win XP to Win7 using some Belkin USB cable device between the 2 VM's. I now have a fully functioning Win7 VM and have deleted the old XP VM which by now was 389GB !!! (I still have a complete backup of the VM).

Even despite the eventually huge size of the XP VM the machine was perfectly responsive and worked flawlessly. My only concerns were not being to create snapshots and backing up such a large VM.

Anyway everything is fine now.

So please consider this cold case closed.