I have an Ubuntu Linux VM on which I would like to reclaim some disk space. From inside the guest OS I can see there ought to be 10+ GB of reclaimable space. However, when I select that option in the Parallels menu, I get a dialog stating, "Ubunutu Linux doesn't take any additional disk space. Parallels Desktop could not find any data to compress or remove to free up the space used by this virtual machine." I see from other forum messages that Parallels only supports reclaiming space on MBR disks, but I believe that's what I'm using. parted shows this description of my disk: Model: ATA Ubuntu Linux-0 (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 68.7GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos The guest OS thinks I have only 7.5 GB of data on the disk but the .pvm disk file is 32 GB in size. What else could cause Parallels to not be able to reclaim disk space on an Ubuntu VM?
Have you checked if the virtual HD knows about the free space? You might try to trim manually by running "fstrim /home" and "fstrim /" in the terminal.
This is a serious problem. The issue still is present as of 2022 in the latest version of parallels 18.1.0 (53311).. Seriously.. This is a known issue since 2013!!!!!! I have TRIM enabled, i am using XFS with all the relevant TRIM flags enabled, periodic TRIM enabled, and so on.. The harddrive image grows and grows, and it is never reclaimed, even when i delete 20 GB of data.. Unbelievable. It says: "Real-time virtual disk optimisation is enabled for it, reclaiming free space as you work".. no, its deceptive and inaccurate. Its not doing any such thing.
