Can I reduce the size of a Windows 11 VM?

As the title says, when I created my Windows 11 VM (on my M1 iMac) I made it too large for my eventual use. I have about 150 GB of "free space" on my Local Drive C. Is there anyway - without completely rebuilding the VM and starting from scratch - to get back some of this space? The option in Parallels to "reclaim disk space" only reclaimed 1.8 GB. Never considered doing this before so not sure if there is a thread on this. Couldnt find anything in the Parallels Knowledge Base articles when I searched.
Thanks.

 

yes you can do it. Shut down the VM, then in hardware section > hard disk > advanced > properties > and here you can decrease the hard drive size. (you need to delete snapshots to be able to change the hard disk size)
Since you can not have a snapshot/backup for resizing, then you could lose data. So you can "clone" the VM and test this workflow on the clone first.
how to clone a vm: in Control Center > right click on gear > clone

 

Hello,
Please note that by default, your virtual hard drive is an 'expanding' one. Even if its size is 250GB it doesn't mean it takes 250 GB of Mac disk space - it'll take the amount of space it actually takes based on the files you keep inside the virtual machine: https://kb.parallels.com/en/4706 .
I'd advise you to follow the steps from KB https://kb.parallels.com/123553 .

 

That is what I thought I remember reading at one time. Because the VM file that I backup using Carbon Copy Cloner is only about 105GB. The 250GB is what I see as a total in Windows Explorer. Thanks for explaining.