Regain disk space after deleting XP VM

[alexandh]

I deleted an Virtual Machine for XP Home Edition but the space I allocated for the Virtual Machine to use (it was one of the install parameters) has not returned. It is showing I am using 32 gigs and I would like to get the space back. Any tools I can use to check and verify this condition.

[alexandh]

Just a thought ... does it allocate space permanently to VMWare or is it not lost.

[RDPetruska]

Did you actually delete all the VM's files? Did you then empty your trashcan?

[alexandh]

Yes I deleted the one under virtual machines and empty the trash can. I think it was under my user account but it said it size was only about 3 gigs (Installed windows office under the VM). Is it better to partition your hard drive and then create a VM there or install vmware there...it appears I have lost the space.

[admin]

The space shouldn't be lost, and deleting the virtual machine files should have freed it. Where does the Finder think all your space went (do a Get Info on each folder)?

[admin]

In the default setup, the virtual disk files grow as needed up to the limit you set. So for example if you make the virtual drive 20 GB, in the beginning it doesn't actually take up 20 GB on your disk. As you write files to it (e.g. installing Windows, Office, etc.) the virtual drive takes up more space, until it maxes out at 20 GB (possibly more if you use snapshots).

[rushfan86]

I believe I figured out how to regain the disk space, at least on Fedora 10. I installed Windows XP SP2 as a virutal machine followed by SP3 as a separate machine intending to delete SP2. Just deleting the machine itself did not reclaim the space. So I went into the terminal as root, navigated to the folder where the .img file is located, which is where you originally allocated how mch max space the VM could have I assume. for me, the file was in /var/lib/libvirt. Root is the only one with permission in my case to modify, so again I nagivated to the folder in a terminal window and used the ls command to view the files. it displayed an .img file for both of my VM's. I used the rm command to delete the .img of SP2, and voila, I regained almost 10 Gb of disk space. Hope that helps