Question about VMware virtual disk files

[vmusermike]

I run VMWARE 15.5.0 and I have noticed that it keeps saving multiples described as vmware virtual disk files , these files are really heavy and right now I have from "Windows 7 x64-s001: all the way down to "Windows 7 x64-s013", sometimes the files are as heavy as 4gb. My question is this, can I delete these files and still have my vm function properly? is there a way to stop these files from being saved every time or would my vmware keep on saving these files until I run out of disk space? I would really appreciate some help.

[Mits2020]

I assume when you installed your Win7 guest you chose to use the default setting "Split virtual disk into multiple files" (typically 4GB each), resulting in many partial files that constitute the guest OS. A typical Win7 x64 guest with Office installed on my PC occupies a total of 34 GB, and I am guessing that the sum of your files is about the same. In my case I chose to use a single file as the virtual disk, so I have one big 34GB file in the virtual machine folder. This is normal for every virtual machine.

The size of the virtual machine is not expected to grow, unless you keep installing new programs, which of course need more space.

If the size of your guest folder is significantly bigger than that, then you may have a problem in your installation.

[scott28tt]

Please refer to these sections of the documentation:

Selecting a Virtual Machine Configuration

Specifying Disk Capacity for a Virtual Machine

Selecting a Hard Disk for a Virtual Machine

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Community,

... from "Windows 7 x64-s001: all the way down to "Windows 7 x64-s013"

By default, virtual disks are split into multiple sparse files. In your case there's a small "Windows 7 x64.vmdk" (the descriptor/header file), and 13 .vmdk data files which make up the VM's virtual disk. According to the number of files that you mentioned, the VM likely has one virtual disk with a provisioned size of 50GB. This is - except for some additional metadata- the maximum that all of the .vmdk files together can grow to. Please note that in case you create snashots, these snapshots can also grow up to that maximum size!

My question is this, can I delete these files and still have my vm function properly?

No you can't. Deleting one of these files will render the VM unusable, because a part of its disk is missing.

What you can do, is to shrink the virtual disk files from the VMware Workstation GUI. The shrink process will clean up unused disk space within the guest file system, i.e. shrink the .vmdk files. This will reduce required host disk space especially if large portions of data has been deleted from within the guest OS. To do this, make sure that the VM is powered off (not suspended), then open the VM's settings, select the virtual disk, and use the "Compact" button. Caution: Ensure that the process doesn't get interrupted! In case the VM contains important data, consider to backup the VM's files/folder regularly.

André