Windows 7 VM in Fusion 6 has VMDK file that constantly expands with no changes to the Windows 7 VM

[YanivMeyer]

Hi there,

I have been trialling VMware Fusion to consider purchasing it versus parallels or some other alternative. For some reason, on the odd occasion the VMDK file just expands RIDICULOUSLY without any explanation.

It is fine when I catch it in time, as I can shut down the VM and then run a "Disk Cleanup" from general settings however when I do not catch it in time, there is not enough space on my hard disk to perform this task. I then have to re-copy the VM from a manual backup I made usually weeks before. This is severely impacting my productivity and I may just end up using a windows machine instead if I cannot solve this problem.

Some specs:

Retina MacBook Pro (15")

i7 CPU

16GB RAM

256GB SSD

Before I started the VM this morning, the space occupied on the hard disk was 40GB

Roughly 6 Hours later, the hard disk was taking up 98GB

The Windows 7 Guest hdd reported an increase of about 80MB in this time

I am currently in a situation where I do not have enough free space on my MacBook HDD to perform a "Disk Cleanup" (button is greyed out)

I have attached the collected data retrieved via the help menu.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Yaniv

[dariusd]

Hi Yaniv,

Something inside the guest is writing to the virtual hard disk, which will cause it to consume additional disk space on the host.  Are you using any full-disk encryption software inside the guest, running any hard disk diagnostic tests from within the guest, or doing any defragmentation of the guest's disk?  Any of those might cause an increase in the virtual disk's host-side storage requirements without reporting additional space consumed within the guest.

On a system with such limited storage, you should consider using a virtual hard disk of a smaller size, so that the VM can't fill the host's disk quite so easily.

Cheers,

--

Darius

[wila]

Something in my reply didn't let me post (which is why I wrote "test" as first reply you could see). Let's try again.

Hi,

YanivMeyer wrote:

  I am currently in a situation where I do not have enough free space on my MacBook HDD to perform a "Disk Cleanup" (button is greyed out)

In order to shrink the disk size now you'll have to copy it to an external disk with enough free disk space.

Steps are:

1. Shut down local virtual machine and VMware fusion

2. Copy the whole bundle of the virtual machine (VM) to an external disk

3. Start VMware Fusion, don't start the VM, but in the Library, right click the VM select "Delete" from the options, then "Keep File" to unregister the current VM (but to keep the data on your host) so that it doesn't show up in the list anymore.

4. Then using File Open, navigate to the external disk and select the VM you just copied

5. Run a Disk Cleanup the way you are used to.

6. Run steps 1 to 5 but with local disk and external disk exchanged (eg. copy from external disk to local). You can delete your original VM before doing that AFTER testing it works OK on the external disk.

You can avoid getting into the "cannot shrink disk" anymore by using a split disk, then the Disk Cleanup will still work with much less free disk space. In order to do so, between steps 5 and 6 - and with the Virtual Machine shut down - go to Virtual Machine Settings, select your Hard Disk, Advanced Options, Check the "Split into multiple files" checkbox. Wait until done.

Hope this helps.

--

Wil

[YanivMeyer]

Thanks DariusD. The machine does have Endpoint Encryption. I have tried disabling the service (Cannot uninstall - not appearing in installed programme list probably due to corporate policy on the endpoint server). Let's how long the encryption service stays disabled for.

[YanivMeyer]

Thanks Wila.

This option was the approach I was going to use however not having access to an external disk with enough space at the moment is my roadblock. I am going to wait to see if disabling Endpoint protection stops the problem, failing that, I will give your approach and indeed splitting the VMDK a go.

[YanivMeyer]

Here is n update of what I have tried and found to work these past few months.

1.) Before converting the original system to a VM using VMConverter, I whent into the disk management of the Windows machine and "shrank" the disk down to the smallest it would allow (down from a 500GB partition to a 250GB partition).

2.) Converted the system to a VM using default settings in VMConverter

3.) In Fusion, for the HDD settings, I changed the disk type to "pre-allocated"

4.) Started up the VM, installed VMWare Tools

5.) Allowed the VM to run for a couple of days and the VM Disk no longer expands

Since I have a new HDD in my laptop that can accommodate the 250GB image, I have not tried by using the option of pre-allocating disabled. I am however convinced though that the VMDK file will continue to grow until it reaches the maximum size of the partition of the original system that was converted.

The guidance in this thread helped me get to this point. Thanks for your advice.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Endpoint encryption will force the machine to fully use the virtual disk.

Converting physical machines is always problematic - especially in this case.  Since you need to have a legal, retail Windows license anyway, your best option is to rebuild the VM from scratch with a more reasonably sized hard drive, the install endpoint encryption.