Can't Compress VM

H

hackmodford

Junior Member
I believe I have an expanding disk.
It currently takes 31.82GB
When I look at the guest OS HDD it says 13.8 is being used.
I go to Virtual Machine>Compress and get this message

Hard disk 1 used by the virtual machine "Windows7" cannot be compressed.

The disk is either plain, or dynamic, or contains no data. Such disks cannot be compressed.
Click to expand...

I don't think I understand what's wrong.

Can anyone help? I'm using parallels 6

Also I don't know if this is important but I imported this VM from a bootcamp partition (then promptly deleted the bootcamp partition)
Also when I look at the HDD it says it's an expanding HDD. I've tried unchecking that box but it says I don't have enough drive space.
 
Same thing here. I have an expaning disk but then I get this error message.
Or does somebody know what is the difference between an expanding disk and dynamic disk?

I use Parallels 7.
 
I don't have any Snapshots

Hi YanaYana

Well I don't have any snapshots.

The only other thing I can tel you is, that this VM used to be a Bootcamp Partition.
But I moved it to a full VM with Parallel Transporter.

Regards

Thorsten
 
can you please go to Virtual Machine menu --> Hardware --> Hard Disk 1 --> edit and make a snapshot.
after that locate your "Windows7.pvm" file in Finder, right click it --> Show package content --> find .hdd file --> Show package content, make a snapshot of the content and post 2 snapshots here.
 
Snapshots are attached

Hi YanaYana

You may find the snapshots attached.

Thanks a lot for your help

Thorsten
 

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Hi YanaYanna

You already suggested that and I already did that.
Or did you mean something else when you posted it the first time?

Well I will try it again maybe it will work this time...

Regards

Thorsten
 
you are right, sorry, didn't notice it in my previous post.
you can try to uncheck the 'Expanding Disk", which will make it plain, and check it back so that the hard drive structure would reseted.
Make a backup - copy pvm file to safe location.
 
Hi YanaYanna

Well I have tried to uncheck the Expanding disk.

My first problem is: The size of the disk is at least 596,2 GB (see screenshot) so I had to find a harddrive which has so much free space.
Do you know of anyway of decreasing this size?
I have tried to type the size in manually ie. 96 GB or 196 but both sizes are no accepted it just jumps back to 596.

Well so I copied the VM to such an empty harddrive and tried to deselect expanding disk.
It then started working the whole night until in the end if gave me the error message "An internal error occurred while performing the operation" (see screenshot) and when I selected More details it said "Unable to read the disk image." (see screenshot).

Well I will try this again maybe it will work next time but I sort of doubt it... :-(

With kind Regards

Thorsten
 

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Good News half way there

Alright good news.

Deselecting expanding disk has worked this time now I have selected it again and the HardDrive image is transforming again lets hope it works :-)
 
Well bad news:

After the virtual harddrive has now been converted back to an expanding disk when I want to compress it I still get the old error message so nothing has changed :-(
 
Well it seems to be difficult to figure out what is the problem... I suppose you don't have ~600 GB of data in your VM (but i guess you had it in the past - this is why the size is so huge) The only way to make the size smaller is obviously - compressing. So we are back to our issue. I would love to figure out this issue personally but it is easier in remote session - so i suggest you to contact support - www.parallels.com/support/
it is free
Please keep a backup on the external drive - manipulations with the hard drive eg compressing are always very dangerous and errors are fatal.
 
OK thanks for all your help I will try to contact parallels support sometime next week when I am back home

All the best

Thorsten
 
Any Success?

YanaYana/tbiegner,

Any luck figuring this out? I've had no luck trying to compress/reduce my VM size (deleted snapshots, etc.). I've got < 20 GB available on my Mac 'side' and 200 free VM GB when I open up my Windows XP. When I try to compress, this is the message I get:

The disk is either plain, or dynamic, or contains no data. Such disks cannot be compressed.

What does this message mean and How can I fix it?

I haven't seen any success stories on this forum except for those involving deleting snapshots (which is NOT the problem I have - my snapshots and the snapshots.xml are all deleted).

I'm running Parallels 7. It seems that earlier versions have the Image Tool which has helped some people fix their problem, but I don't have that. IS there a way to access/download/use this Image Tool with Parallels 7?

Help Needed!

Thanks,
R
 
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YanaYana,

Following the Link you sent me, my comments below are Bold/Underlined:


Cause
Parallels Desktop cannot compress the following types of the virtual hard disk:
- dynamic disk
- disk with GPT partition scheme
- disk with empty MBR (master boot record)
- disk with snapshots
- undo disk
- plain disk


Resolution
- dynamic disk - compressing is not supported in the current version of Parallels Desktop
- GPT disks - compressing is not supported in the current version of Parallels Desktop
- disk with empty MBR - compressing is not supported in the current version of Parallels Desktop

How do I check to find out if the above are true?

- disk with snapshots - merge all snapshots and try compressing again.
to do it please go to Virtual machine menu - manage snapshots, choose snapshots one-by-one starting from the left side and click 'Delete'
Already did this - no snapshots left


- undo disk - disable undo disk feature
to do it go to Virtual machine menu - Configure - Options - Security. Choose 'Disable' for Undo Disk feature.
Already Did this


-plain disk -convert dist type to expanding, and try to compressing it again
to do it go to Virtual machine menu - Configure - Hardware tab, Choose the virtual hard drive you want to compress, click on 'Edit' and check "Expanding disk" checkbox. Click Apply.

Can't make any changes here. Any time I click Edit, I get the following message:

Unable to resize the last volume. The file system on that volume might be corrupted or not supported.
Please try to open the virtual machine and check the file system for errors.

Any changes I try to make in the subsequent screen (adjust size, check/uncheck 'Expanding Disk',check/uncheck 'split disk into 2GB files') do not get saved/applied...


Finally, when I go into my Windows XP VM, and try to run chkdsk /f from the command line, I get the following response...

"The type of the file system is NTFS.
Cannot lock current drive

Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be checked the next time the system restarts? (Y/N)"
 
Still No Luck - updated

Sorry - unfinished last post...

Ran chkdsk /f on restart and everything went through fine on the chkdsk.

However, still have the same problem mentioned earlier. Can't make any Edits to the HD configuration NOR can I compress the VM.
 
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It is nice to hear from you that everything is now fine in your side


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