Workstation 15 Pro VM Manage does not show Disk Cleanup option

[mikeiz]

I created a VM on my Windows 10 host and installed Ubuntu 20.04.4 with a 500 GB disk size. I installed software that required 300 GB of space. Due to circumstances, I deleted this software. I see that I have 453G of free space. I tried to reclaim this free disk space by running Compact Disk, but it did not increase the amount of free space on my Windows 10 host PC. I tried to do a Clean Disk, but I do not see that option under VM/Manage.

[wila]

Hi,

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Workstation-Pro/16.0/com.vmware.ws.using.doc/GUID-421A1073-BF16-4B...

As you can read in the documentation above, the disk cleanup feature is only available for Windows guests and only if a bunch of other variables have been met.

So not available for an ubuntu guest.

You can still shrink the disk, but it requires more work.

For possibilities see:

https://wiki.vi-toolkit.com/index.php?title=Shrink_guest_on_hosted_platform

The easiest way is probably by using the vmware tools solution.

https://wiki.vi-toolkit.com/index.php?title=Shrink_guest_on_hosted_platform#Shrink_using_vmware_tool...

Please note that you can't shrink your disk if it is encrypted.

edit: Important!
If your virtual disk is a single file then you need as much free disk space as the virtual disk is in order to be able to shrink the disk.
Eg. if your virtual disk is now 400GB in size then you need at least 400GB in free space ( a few GB more is highly recommended )

If you virtual disk is a split disk then you only need 16GB free disk space (make that 20GB) before starting the shrink.

If you don't have sufficient free disk space then a shrink can end up destroying your virtual disk. So either way I do recommend taking a backup before starting a potentially disrupting disk operation.

--
Wil

[mikeiz]

My disk is encrypted by BitLocker. I do not have the authority to turn it off. In any case, it was enabled when I created the VM. I creaked a split disk. Is my option to delete the VM and create a new one? If I create a new one using the default disk size, how difficult is it to increase it as needed?

[wila]

Increasing disk sizes is easy with VM's.

The only time it is problematic on windows is if the recovery partition is positioned directly after your main partition as you then have to move that before you can grow your partition.
IIRC that doesn't happen on a new install.

--
Wil