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licensedtoquill
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is this a reporting error? Looks like an old Windows 3.0 problem!

I am having a space problem with my VM. It is about 45GB and the windows 7 OS takes up a few GB.I have a few programs on it which I suppose take up a few GB more space.  But there should be plenty of space in it. Yet the display box in the Fusion start-up screen shows all 45GB taken up with nothing free and nothing reclaimable.

I can get into the VM easily enough and everything runs OK for about ten minutes. Then I get low space error messages, sometimes telling me that I have as little as 2MB left on it!  If I go into a file manager, I cant find what is taking up all the space, - most of the directories seem to be empty.  Occasionally I can run a cleanup and free as much as 2GB of space on the VM, but whatever I free up, no space seems to appear in the VM!

It is like I am running Windows 3.0 and there is a massive memory  leak somewhere, with something mysteriously expanding to take up all available space on the drive as soon as any space appears?   And I have (as I said) managed to clean up at times up to 2GB of space on this VM. But even having done that, if I exit the VM immediately, the 'bar' on the Fusion startup screen on my Mojave OS still looks completely full with nothing reclaimable!

There is nothing excessive in ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS. Am i missing something or where are these mysterious tens of gigabytes of space going please?

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RDPetruska
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Most likely it's hidden/system files... Swap file (which you need) and possibly a hibernate file (which you don't need).  You can use a freeware utility, such as WinDirStat or TreeSizeFree, to see a graphical view of all the space on the disk, to help you find the culprit files.

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Technogeezer
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Along the same lines as @RDPetruska - how much memory have you allocated to your Win7 VM? That influences the size of a hibernate file, swap file size, and the need to use swap file resources (e.g your VM memory is too small for what you are doing so the VM starts swapping). 

- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides

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RDPetruska
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Most likely it's hidden/system files... Swap file (which you need) and possibly a hibernate file (which you don't need).  You can use a freeware utility, such as WinDirStat or TreeSizeFree, to see a graphical view of all the space on the disk, to help you find the culprit files.

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Technogeezer
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Along the same lines as @RDPetruska - how much memory have you allocated to your Win7 VM? That influences the size of a hibernate file, swap file size, and the need to use swap file resources (e.g your VM memory is too small for what you are doing so the VM starts swapping). 

- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides
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licensedtoquill
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Thanks for that guys, I did install TreeFileSize and checked for a swap file but couldnt see any. BUT i am not sure how to check for or stop using a hibernate file.

i checked memory usage in settings and I was using 3066 MB instead of the recommended 2048 mb. Anyway I changed it back to 2048 and we'll see if that is using the 20-30GB of mysteriously used space

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Technogeezer
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I’m assuming that you are reporting space used from within the VM.

AFAIK there is always a swap/page file - I believe it’s called pagefile.sys. Also the hibernation file is called hiberfil.sys.  Both should be in the root of your C: drive but are hidden. TreeFileSze should be able to reveal them. 

Here’s how to disable hibernation in Windows, just FYI https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/be9adcf4-1f4e-f68a-528b-d09670baed

I doubt though that either of these will free up 20-30 GB of space. 

Another thought: has this VM existed for any length of time? In older Windows releases IIRC, Windows was pretty bad about cleaning up after itself when installing updates.  

- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides
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licensedtoquill
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Thanks for that. Let's see how those two changes affect whether or how quickly the low space warning comes on.  Should I notice any change in the black bar in the Fusion startup screen? Should any of the 3-4GB I have freed up show as either free space or reclaimable? I would assume yes?

By the way, I seem to remember that cleaning up windows install files was how I 'found' that 2-3GB of space. That didn't show on reboot as either free or reclaimable!

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licensedtoquill
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Actually things are now worse! I am now getting Fusion error messages on the host os telling me that there is so little spare space in the VM so I must close it immediately!

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Technogeezer
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Ok,. Bump the memory back up. I think your best bet here is to troubleshoot the situation as if you had an out-of-space issue on a  physical Windows machine. My guess is that something in the VM is gobbling up your virtual disk drive’s space that doesn’t have anything to do with Fusion.

 
In this case, what Fusion reports in the Virtual Machine Library isn’t really relevant. Youy’ve reached the amount of space that you’ve allocated to the VM’s hard disk drive (the size of the virtual disk, analogous to a hard drive size). Fusion might report more space for a VM if you have snapshots and other transient files required during VM execution.
 
I assume you have plenty of space on the Mac file system where this VM is located?
- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides
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licensedtoquill
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Putting the memory back to 3066 disclosed that, according to the screen, I still have 13 GB available in the VM!  So where is it all going once the VM starts?

No, I dont have much host space left, but there should be 38gb, which should be enough for most purposes? 

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Technogeezer
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What does Windows Task Manager say within the VM starts up for both disk space, memory, and swapfile usage?

- Paul (Technogeezer)
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Technogeezer
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I still suggest troubleshooting the space usage as if it were a physical machine if you think that there's too much of the 45GB virtual disk size being used. 

Just so I'm clear, when you say "the screen says 13GB is available in the VM", what screen is that? Is that from Windows (properties of the C: drive)?

- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides
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licensedtoquill
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Hey, there is something very peculiar going on. I shut down the VM and restarted it and suddenly the whole file is no longer to be found on my computer! Specifically the actual file found by spotlight now shows as a 75MB file and  has an exclamation mark in it!

 

(Malwarebytes shows nothing amiss)

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Technogeezer
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The whole virtual machine file is missing on your Mac??? Even through Finder?

That's very, very concerning. Hardware issue? AV quarantine?

- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides
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licensedtoquill
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It gets curiouser and curiouser. An old Linux Tessa VM disappeared with it and doesn't even appear any more in the Fusion startup menu!

 

The only working VM I have is an Acronis Disk Director one.   I dont bother with AV.

Speaking of Finder, the whole VM folder has disappeared from Finder and can only now be located through Spotlight, from which I have to run the Norton VM

 

(I can, of course, restore the Windows one from any number of backups)

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Technogeezer
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That is bizarre. You need to get to the bottom of why things are disappearing on your Mac without your intervention.

A thought... By any chance do you have iCloud Drive configured for your Desktop and Documents folders? And you have "optimize Mac Storage" enabled? If so it might be moving them to the cloud "for you" if your Mac is running low on disk space. I would place your VMs in a place outside your Desktop or Documents folder... 

- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides
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licensedtoquill
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I don't use icloud at all. As I dont use it, I dont think my drive could be configured to use it? I dont think it is as surely I would have to be signed in to use it?

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licensedtoquill
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(it was the sharing screen in Fusion settings which was reporting that 13GB of available space after I changed memory back to its previous setting)

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licensedtoquill
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Anyway, the new VM is a 2019 backup of the VM which was giving all those curious results. And now I have to update it to get the Windows installation to be stable. And i am getting low space warnings and low memory warnings (it tells me to close programs to try to restore memory!) on this one!

i suppose I'll have to start running ccleaner and deleting files to free up some space again

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licensedtoquill
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Actually the swap file is set way too small. I dont know how it got that way but it is set to 534 mb. The system-managed size is 3083mb so I'll give that size a try to begin with.

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RDPetruska
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Just thought of something else... In addition to disabling hibernate in the Windows guest (so as not to have it reserve the hibernate file, since when you suspend the VM from Fusion, that state is saved on your host filesystem), you can also disable the system restore points and save the reserved disk space for that.

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