How long does it take to Clean Up Virtual Machine and Reclaim Disk Space? Taking a while.

[jeffbcnc]

I just upgraded from Fusion 4 to 6.  Before converting my 131 GB VM to version 6 I did a Clean Up because it said I had 9 GB of reclaimable space.  I don't know how long it takes to run.  It has been running for over 20 minutes but there appears to be no way to determine if anything is happening.  It just shows a "Reclaiming Disk Space..." window with no way to cancel out.  The file size and date/time of the VM file is not changing.  Activity monitor shows between 3% and 5% of the processor with 13 to 15 threads being used.

I backed up the VM file. 

When do I become concerned that nothing is happening?  How do I stop the process?

Thanks.

[jeffbcnc]

Still running a half hour later.  Still no progress indicator.  There is now a cancel button.  Don't think it was there before.  Be patient?  How long can it take?

[WoodyZ]

To help figure out what is what, the best way to provide comprehensive diagnostic information is to use the "Collect Support Information" command from the VMware Fusion (menu bar) > Help > Collect Support Information and then attach the .zip file (or .tgz file if pre-version 6) it created on your Desktop to a reply post.

Note: Use the "Use advanced editor" link in the upper right corner of the normal reply window to bring up the Advanced Editor where you'll be able to attach files via the Choose File button or Browse button (depending on the Browser) above the Post Message button!

[jeffbcnc · Accepted solution]

Thank you WoodyZ.  No further assistance is needed.  I now have the answer.  It took about an hour and a half to reclaim the space.  All is well and patience is a virtue.  The VM (Windows 7 - 64)  booted nicely.  I hope this post help others to know it can take a while.  It would be nice if there was some progress indicator or something to indicate something constructive is happening.

[EPK39]

Thanks for these posts.  I have a Windows XP VM (!!) with 76GB being reclaimed.  I figure it will be done around Labor Day but, as you said, patience is a virtue.

[schmidtl4]

@jeffbcnc - appreciate you posting this.  I have a 367GB partition for my guest Windows 7 system.  After upgrading to Fusion 7 I also took the initiative to clean up/reclaim space.  It said there was 56GB reclaimable.  So far the clean up/reclaim process has been running for 3 hours.  Had it not been for your post, I might have tried some drastic measure to reboot my mac.  Thanks for the "save". 

[jeffbcnc]

Glad that was helpful 🙂  Did it finish?

[schmidtl4]

Unfortunately not.  I'm presently contemplating taking the "kill" route.  I actually clicked the cancel button 3 hours ago (it's now 7 hours in total) and it has not quit.  Surely it can't be holding that much data in memory that it needs to expunge before quitting?  Any thoughts on the merits of killing Fusion (force quit) at this point?

[wila]

schmidtl4 wrote:

Unfortunately not.  I'm presently contemplating taking the "kill" route.  I actually clicked the cancel button 3 hours ago (it's now 7 hours in total) and it has not quit.  Surely it can't be holding that much data in memory that it needs to expunge before quitting?  Any thoughts on the merits of killing Fusion (force quit) at this point?

It doesn't keep the data in memory, it is working on cleaning out your virtual disk. VMware should not have offered a cancel button as there isn't much of a cancel in there. If you force quit Fusion then most likely you end up with a corrupt disk on your guest. Keep on waiting, do something else while it is working if you have trouble waiting.

--

Wil

[jeffbcnc]

I hope it completed in the end and that waiting was the answer.

[schmidtl4]

Thanks will. My impatience got to me. I killed the process and you are 100% correct - I ended up with a corrupt virtual machine.  So I restored from my trusty backup and proceeded to work as with the old VM with 56GB of reclaimable space.

Then... before I went to bed, I decided to give it another go.

This time it ran 9 hours before my patience wore thin.  And here's the interesting part.

I clicked the "cancel" button (this is Fusion 7 btw offering the option), and, like last time, it continued to show the barber pole.

I gave it 10 minutes after clicking cancel then killed the process.

Fully expecting to have a corrupt disk, I tried to launch the Win 7 guest OS - and it worked fine!

Now the interesting part!

I shut down the guest Win7 OS.

I decided to check to see what Fusion was now reporting as reclaimable. (56GB or something else..)

To my surprise, the reclaimable was down to 1.4GB!  So indeed, it would appear that it WAS working and was almost done.

So I started the reclaim process yet again and it completed normally.

So in my case, I estimate that the wait time was about 10 hours.

[wila]

Hello schmidtl4,

I'm so glad to hear that eventually it worked and that you had good backups before starting this process.

10 hours of waiting is a very long time indeed.

--

Wil

[kharringer]

88 GB reclaimable, from a Win 8.1 guest with total size 137GB. Started around 21:30 1/22/2015. We'll see...

[jeffbcnc]

How long did it take or is it still going?

[kharringer]

Incredible! This was done in under three hours. I never got any indication that anything was happening, or progressing, until I suddenly noticed that the "reclaiming..." pop up popped off. Ha! Now, that VM is all tidy, a sliver of its former self. Patience paid in this regard. I was going to kill it, but thought I should check the forums first - good thing.