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SecretX
Contributor
Contributor

I've cancelled the automatic cleanup of a deleted snapshot in VMWare Workstation, how do I clean up it now?

I'm using VMWare Workstation (v15.5.6), and I was managing my snapshots when I accidentally canceled the cleanup of a deleted snapshot, and now my VM size on disk is much higher than it's real size (reported inside VM's OS), how can I get ALL the reminiscent cleaned up? I tried to search for answers, but seems like everybody that has done this used vSphere, and in there there is a button called "Delete All" inside Snapshot Manager which delete the reminiscent of any broken snapshot, and also any snapshot taken for that particular VM but there is no such button in VMWare Workstation (not that I'm aware of).

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

You can try to create a new snapshot and immediately remove it again.

If there's snapshots that are still part of the chain they either should up or get consolidated in the chain.

If that doesn't work.. there's either a long steps of analysis in what exactly happened or... the supported road of taking a full clone of your VM (careful! Do not create a linked clone!)

By creating a full clone of your VM you are basically creating a new copy of the VM that only contains the data needed for the current VM.

If there's any orphaned snapshots and other unrelated files in your VM's folder then they are not in the new full clone.

edit: Please note that a full clone might trigger a Windows reactivation, although that appears to be pretty rare.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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SecretX
Contributor
Contributor

I tried to clone my VM, and it didn't worked at all Smiley Sad. The reported size inside my VM is 30GB and after defrag and compact (and no snapshots because that is a clone) it remained at 40GB on my disk, it is literally +33% increase over the expected size. In comparison, my other VM is reporting 36GB inside it's OS and 31GB on my disk (after defrag and compact).

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

I'm a bit confused by your answer.

The reported size inside my VM is 30GB and after defrag and compact (and no snapshots because that is a clone) it remained at 40GB on my disk

First of all, defrag doesn't help making your VM smaller (ever), if anything it makes it bigger. Is this the defrag that VMware offers (defrag at host level) or the in guest defrag options from the guest OS. Either way... it does not help in making things smaller.

Following up by a compact might help in reclaiming some of the space, but only zero'd out space. If you do not zero out the empty space then it cannot reclaim all the free disk space.

You can do all of this manually or instead do it easy and use the shrink option via vmware tools.

See Shrink guest on hosted platform - VI-Toolkit where I lay out a more thorough explanation on how-to do this either using the compact option (via command line is the same) or via shrink from vmware-tools.

Also "no snapshots because that is a clone" ? Do you perhaps mean that it is a new clone and as such there is no snapshot?

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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