Managing the size of my Virtual Machine

I noticed that my VM had increased in size to 112 GB. The disk is set to be 80 GB in Parallels. When I look in Windows 10, I see that I have an 80GB disk and that 47.9 GB is used (31.2 free).

I did have the settings set to expanding disk. I unchecked that box and applied the change and the disk increased to 129 GB. When I opened the Windows 10 pvm package, I noticed that there was a file called Windows 7 x64.hdd that is 85.9 GB. There were a couple of files called various iterations of Windows 7 x64.hdd copy. One of the copy files was 43.08 GB. I removed that copy, and now see that my Windows 10.pvm file is 85.9 GB. It seems to function fine, so I didn't need the copy.

My question is how can I reduce the size of my .pvm file. In the configuration menu. I do not have the option to decrease the size of the size below 80 GB (the slider goes from 80GB to 2TB). I don't have it set at expanding disk at the moment, but I could choose that option. Would that free up some disk space? When I try to use the "free up disk space" function in parallels, I am told that there is no space to free up.

 

Hello mikel51.

Disabling this option doesn't concern minimizing the disk space the VM occupies on your Mac. You can enable this option. This only means that the disk space value allocated to Windows under Hardware -> Hard Disk in the VM configuration is only an upper limit - not an actual, tangible disk space amount - to which Windows will gradually occupy more and more disk space on your Mac.

There are a few ways this could be accomplished. Try following the steps explained below:
1.) Free up disk space in Windows as much as possible, shut Windows down and then reclaim disk space.
2.) Disable 'SmartGuard' - -.
3.) Launch Terminal (from the Finder menu, navigate to Go -> Utilities -> Terminal.app).
4.) Copy the following command and paste it in Terminal as it is (do not hit 'Enter' yet): prl_disk_tool merge --hdd
5.) Find your virtual machine on your Mac (it's a file with the extension '.pvm') and ensure that there is a backup of this file available.
6.) Right-click on the .pvm file, select 'Show Package Contents' from the menu that appears and look for a file with the extension '.hdd'.
7.) Drag this .hdd file and drop it inside the Terminal window (do not close the screen in which you see the .hdd file yet; keep it open).
8.) In Terminal, you will now see an outcome similar to the example below (please note there should be a space between --hdd and /Users/Username...):
prl_disk_tool merge --hdd /Users/Username/Documents/Parallels/Windows\ 7.pvm/Windows\ 7-0.hdd
9.) Press 'Return' to start merging Snapshots (this process removes all snapshots, including hidden ones). (IMPORTANT: Please wait till the operation completes; do NOT close the Terminal window before then.)
10.) Once the operation finishes, close Terminal.
11.) Now, go back to the window in which you saw the .hdd file. Move the folder 'Snapshots' and the file 'Snapshots.xml' to the Trash. Then close this window.

 

Well I tried this, but I didn't have any snapshots, so the .hdd file stayed at 85.9 GB, my Windows disk is still under 50GB, and Parallels won't let me decrease the size of the disk below 80GB. Not the worlds biggest deal since I am offloading backups of my VM from the Mac HD, but a bit irritating that I have to allot 30 GB of my Mac HD to VM space that I am not using.

 

This step doesn't concern minimizing the disk space the VM occupies on your Mac when the 'Expanding Disk' option is enabled.

Have you tried freeing up disk space within Windows guest OS and then reclaiming that saved space for your Mac?