Cannot Shrink/Convert 2048GB VMDK

[louie7600]

Hello everyone, I have several 2TB (2048GB) thick vmdk files that I need to shrink or convert to thin/growable. The actual file sizes are 2,147,483,647KB.

I have tried the VMware standalone converter, but received the error "unable to obtain hardware information for the selected machine". I've tested this with smaller VMDK's and didn't have an issue.

I also tried the vmware-vdiskmanager.exe that's included with VMware workstation pro, but received the error of "failed to defragment: The specified file is not a virtual disk (0x3ebf)" and then the same error when trying to convert to thin/growable. I tested the same commands on a smaller vmdk and it worked without a problem.

I just seem to be really stuck because of the 2TB size. Nothing seems to be able to shrink or convert them.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

[rcporto]

You're running these virtual machines on VMware Workstation or vSphere ESXi ?

[louie7600]

ESXI 5.1, Virtual machine version 8.

[continuum]

> I just seem to be really stuck because of the 2TB size. Nothing seems to be able to shrink or convert them.
Probably the vmdks would behave better if you resized them to 2040Gb - to do that you could first resize the partition inside the guest, then the vmdk can be manually resized to 2040Gb with a dd-command.
Afterwards you just need to fix the partitiontable and you are done.
I do this occasionally when the customers dont have time to create a new smaller vmdk and then copy all the data to the new smaller vmdk.

[a_p_]

I also tried the vmware-vdiskmanager.exe that's included with VMware workstation pro, ...

Just a quick question. Do you also receive an error message using the vmkfstools command line utility on ESXi?

André

[brunofernandez1]

if you have the vSphere environment you could try to SVMotion the disk and mark the target disk as thin...

[louie7600]

Sorry, but how would I do a "dd command"?

[louie7600]

Yes, something along the lines of "failed: the specified file is not a virtual disk"

I have been successful with this on smaller VMDK's but for some reason, it's not able to read the large VMDK (same problem as VMware Stand Alone Converter).

[louie7600]

I did a defrag and then punchzero. I then used the clone feature and chose thin for the destination. This shrunk the size to the correct 760,005,600KB, however the Provisioned size is still 2,147,484,000KB.