How do I shrink a VMDK file in Windows?

Table of Contents

Reduce the VMDK File Size of the VMWare Virtual Machine

Shut down the virtual machine you want to reduce disk size;
Using SSH, connect to the console of the ESXi host the VM is registered on (you can use putty or the built-in Windows SSH client);

How do I shrink a VMDK in VMware?

Press Control-Alt-Delete to login to the virtual machine. Select Disk Management, and select the partition you need to shrink. Right Click the Volume/Partition to shrink, and select Shrink.

Can I shrink VMDK file?

To reduce VMDK size, it may be smart to resize the partition, separating the occupied disk volume from the free volume. Next, you need to “cut off” the free space to shrink VMDK such that no data will be lost. This being said, the process can be formally split into 2 subtasks: Resizing partition on the guest OS level.

Can you shrink a thin provisioned disk?

Having thin provisioned disk is usually no longer a performance problem so it is a valid design choice even in production. A common issue with thin disks is that the size will grow when required, but never shrink. When you require the capacity only once you might want to get it back from the virtual machine.

How do I reduce disk size in VMware fusion?

On VMware Fusion, select a virtual machine and click Virtual Machine > Settings > Hard Disk > Advanced options. Check whether the “Pre-allocate disk space” option under Advanced options is checked or not.

How do I shrink a thin VMDK?

What I am thinking of is:

migrate the VM to another datstore, selecting “Thick Provisioned” as the target format.
run sdelete within the guest OS to zero out unused blocks.
migrate the VM back to the original datastore, selecting “Thin Provisioned” in the wizard.

How do I shrink a disk in Hyper V?

In a nutshell, in order to shrink or compact virtual hard disks, you should do the following:

Open Hyper-V Manager.
Launch the Edit Virtual Hard Disk Wizard.
Specify the virtual hard disk whose size you want to reduce.
Select the action you want to perform (Shrink or Compact).
Click Finish to accept the changes.

How do you shrink a thick provisioned VMDK?

You can try a Storage vMotion and select thin provisioning on the destination route:

Right-click the virtual machine, and click Migrate.
Click Change datastore.
Click Next, and select a datastore that is not the same as the current datastore.
From the dropdown, select the Thin Provision virtual disk format.

How do I shrink a drive?

Solution

Simultaneously press Windows logo key and R key to open Run dialog box.
Right click on C drive, then select “Shrink volume”
On the next screen, you can adjust the needed shrinking size (also the size for new partition)
Then the C drive side will be shrinked, and there will be new unallocated disk space.

How do I attach .vmdk file to VMware?

In Workstation,go to File > New > Virtual Machine.

Select Custom and click Next.

Select the hardware compatibility you require and click Next.

In the Guest Operating System Installation selection screen,select I will install the Operating System later and click Next.

Select the guest operating system that is installed,including the version.

How to reduce hard disk size in VM in VMware?

Expand a virtual disk to store more data

Thin an existing large virtual disk so it consumes less datastore space,without actually shrinking the virtual disk

Shrink a virtual disk,if it is too large

Decrease the size of a virtual disk

How to repair VMDK?

Open VMDK File Recovery Tool

Select disk type and browse the corrupted VMDK file.

Click Next button.

Select the scanning mode and other options and then click Next button.

Select the volume from the list and other custom settings.

Choose one of the recovery mode.

The selected volume will be scanned.

How to repair corrupt VMDK or VMware file?

Press Windows+R keys and enter cmd and click OK button.

Navigate to the VMware installation file.

Enter the command vmware-vsdiskmanager.exe

Press Enter button.