How to Reduce VMware Virtual Machine Hard Disk Space

VMware is Microsoft's best virtual machine at the moment, and it is easy to run multiple systems simultaneously with virtual machines. In particular, those who need multiple systems to complete different functions are more needed. VMware is the best choice. Here are some tips for using VMware virtual machines. This article describes how to dynamically allocate hard drives for Vmware.

vmware takes up hard disk space and does not increase it. Even if you delete a file, the occupied hard disk space is not released. After using it for a while, the space is not enough. Solution:

Method 1: Cut a portion of the *sxxx.vmdk file to another drive letter. Open Debian_Lenny.vmdk with ultraEdit and you will see a list of files. Reposition the file you cut. Start the virtual machine. This method does not free up space.

Method 2: The virtual machine has VMware Tools installed. The virtual Windows system has VMware Tools in the control panel. After opening, you can see a column Shrink, select the partition to be compressed, click Prepare to shrink to prepare for compression. After the compression preparation is completed in the virtual machine system, it will jump back to the real operating system. There is a progress box indicating that the virtual machine file is being compressed, and finally the virtual machine system is prompted to complete the compression work. The virtual Linux/FreeBSD system can use vmware-toolbox. Install vmware-tools in linux, then vmware-toolbox under the command line Click on strike Note: This method should ensure the space of your current disk >= the size of the virtual machine to be strike. So if you don't have enough disk space, you can use a method to move some files to another disk, then strike, and finally move the removed files back.

Method 3: In the vmware installation directory, there is a vmware-vdiskmanager This is the method I use in the window. It usually takes a few minutes to complete. Close the client, under the host command line: vmware-vdiskmanager - k *.vmdk Note: The * here is the file name of your virtual machine vmdk file, including the path, such as: vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -k " ;G:\\mivm\ et\\WinXP.vmdk" The execution process will display the progress. When finished, it will prompt: Shrink: 100% done. Shrink completed successfully. However, the reduction is not too much.

There are some restrictions on the compression function. For example, you cannot use it on a virtual machine with pre-allocated space, you can't have a snapshot, you can only compress the partition, you can't compress the physical disk, etc. For details, please refer to the user manual. . In addition, when viewing the help, you should click the “User's Manual” in the Help menu instead of “Help Topics”, otherwise you will only see some very basic VMware software operation configurations. A lot of things can't be found.