VM Fusion not able to use purgeable space

[lubcke]

Hi,

I'm running VMware Fusion Professional Version 11.5.3 in a MacBook Pro running macOS Catalina Version 10.15.4 ( both are the most updated versions currently)

What happens is that after deleting an older Virtual Machine, some space got released, becoming the famous "purgeable" data, to be more specific, 231,44GB. This kind of space is normally released whenever another piece of software need some extra space, however I'm trying to expand a Virtual Disk from 69Gb to 80 Gb (which I should be capable to do due to the capacity of my disk), unfortunately it's not working.

One option would be to use 3rd Part software to get rid of the "purgeable" data, and then allocate the extra space, however I don't think it should be necessary, as the management system is capable to release the required space.

Any idea on how to correctly fix it ?

[ColoradoMarmot]

This is an OSX bug, not a Fusion specific issue.  The purgable space won't purge if a time machine backup is running.   Let that finish, reboot, and it should free up.

[lubcke]

Hi dlhotka, I really appreciate your answer but it has not worked for me. I had the Time Machine enabled, but even disabling it, removing the disk from the "Backup Disk" and rebooting it, same error remain. Did I miss any step here ?

[dempson · Accepted solution]

Not just "if a time machine backup is running". If you have previously done a Time Machine backup and your main drive is using APFS (all Mojave and later systems, some High Sierra), then the system retains an APFS snapshot on your main drive as at the last Time Machine backup, which it uses as a reference to save time preparing the next backup. Any files you delete after that backup cannot have their disk space freed until the next time you complete a Time Machine backup (at which point TM allows the old snapshot to be deleted), or if the system eventually purges that snapshot because actual free disk space is getting critically low.

If you have multiple TM backup drives configured, there is a "last backup" snapshot for each backup drive: you may have to do a backup on all of your drives to allow the disk space to be freed.

The system also creates other snapshots for the local snapshots feature, which are lower priority and are deleted first as disk space gets somewhat low.

For example, I see one of my my snapshots from about two weeks ago (for a TM backup drive which is stored offsite and I can't access because I'm in lockdown due to the pandemic) is now listed as (dataless) via

tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

whereas all my other snapshots are from the last two days.

There is no easy way to see which snapshots are references for TM backups, other than comparing their times with the listed "last backup" in System Preferences > Time Machine. To free up space used by files that were deleted at a known date/time, you need the system to delete or purge all snapshots older than that.

VMware can't create a large virtual disk because it checks the actual free space, doesn't try to create its huge file(s) and therefore doesn't trigger the "disk nearly full" high priority purge.

You may be able to force a purge by creating large temporary files that use up most of the actual free space (e.g. get down to less than 20 GB free). You can see the actual free space using

df -h /

[lubcke]

So, how I managed to clean the purgeable space in my HD.

First of all I had to relocate files around in order to open space for a 350 GB and proceed with a full backup of my system. I initially tough it would be enough, but I had to do some trick around, as recommended. Using the Disk utility was possible to create volumes with reserved space. It's importante to use the reserved space otherwise it will not dealocate space from the other volumes, and make them full, to create this new one.

In my case, just on volume would be enough for my space need, but as I wanted to test it out, I've really push the storage go its limites, as in the attachment, I could get just a few kB purgeable. I did create each volume to the size that was appearing to be as free, after some interactions of this process, I ended with 5 volumes of different reserved sizes.

After having all volumes created, the deletion is the easy part.

As a result, I learned something, have currently 3.5MB purgeable and could expand my Virtual Machine Disk size. Thank you all for your support.

Ps: I still think that VMware could some make the virtual machine use the purgeable space.