How long should it take to delete a snapshot?

W

wdatkinson

Bit poster
This morning, I attempted to run parallels compressor to reduce the size of my .hdd file. After manually running the compressor tool, it said it could not run due to the presence to snapshots.

So, I opened the snapshot manager and selected the single snapshot I have and clicked delete. I sat here and watched it for over 30 minutes before using activity monitor to kill parallels. My VM was running at the time.

After restarting parallels, but before restarting the VM, I again went into snapshot manager and tried to delete the snapshot. Once again, I'm sitting here for ~15 minutes.

How long should this process take???? Is there a manual way to remove snapshots besides using the snapshot manager?
 
Hello Wdatkinson,

Please try to create a new Snapshot first, than delete both of them.
You can also delete the snapshot file manually: go to your VM folder -> Snapshots folder and delete the latest file.

Best regards,
Xenos
 
Ok, I created Snapshot #2, and was able to delete it. But when I go back to Snapshot #1, it hangs again on deletion.....

You mentioned deleting BOTH, but I wasn't able to select multiple snapshots in the manager. I guess I'll try to manually remove it from the file system.....

It would appear that something is wrong with Snapshot #1, which if so, shakes my faith in the whole snapshot system.
 
Wdatkinson, before you delete the snapshot file manually, please try using Image Tool (Applications -> Parallels).

You should not have tried deleting the snapshot when Guest OS was running.

Best regards,
Xenos
 
Great.... Too late. I did shut the Guest OS down, and manually remove all the snapshot files in the Shapshots folder.

Here's what I'm trying to do. I want to compact my disk image.... Its always puked because I had snapshots. I have a 76GB XP disk image that I should be able to compact to half that size.

However, I can't run compressor from within the guest OS. It pukes and says that I either have snap shots, undo disks enabled or a plain disk. I no longer have snapshots, and I've confirmed that undo disks option is not checked in the VM. I'm guessing that plain disks means a physical partition on a hard drive?

So why can't I compress my image?
 
Hello,

Please do the following:

Right click on your .hdd file and choose "Show package contents";
Copy the .hds file on your Desktop;
Rename the copied .hds file on the Desktop to Windows02.hdd;
Go to your VM Configuration Editor -> Hard Disk section and enable "Use image file" option;
Browse to Windows02.hdd and click "Convert".

These steps will restore the virtual hard disk functions and you will be able to compact the disk.

Please make backups from time to time.

Best regards,
Xenos
 
There are two .hds file in there? One is 45.x GB and the other is around 3.x GB. I only have one drive on the machine. They are named:

winxp.hdd.0.{5fbab.....}

and

winxp.hdd.0.{af2f3fe......}

I'm guessing I want the 45GB file, but what is the 3GB file?

Thanks for the help so far.
 
Hello Wdatkinson,

I am sorry for being beyond reach these days.

Please try making a .hdd file from each of these .hds files (see the instructions above).
Then create two new VMs with these new virtual hard disks.
Compare the VMs ans choose one according to your needs.

Best regards,
Xenos
 
I noticed recently that my .hdd file is larger than what's allocated in windows. So, I use "show package contents" to look inside and there are 8 .hds files in there ranging in size from 5MB to 39.06 GB. Now this is a disk I've had problems with before and I've had it a long time. I'm pretty sure it's not an expandable drive. So, how do I go about getting my disc space back?

edit: According to this thread: http://forums.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=20068&highlight=compressor it looks like I need to run Compressor to merge these other disks and then run Compactor to get everything squished down as it should be.
 
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Here's a problem, Image tool says it needs more disk space to run than I have available. I can't free up any more space because it's all being taken up by these huge .hds files. How do I proceed? Can I just use the tool on one of them if I drag it out and rename it to .hdd? And if so, which one do I choose? The one that was modified most recently? Or do I need to do the most recent 2 or 3?

edit: OK, I bit the bullet and moved a few programs and the garage band music files to an external drive. Image tool was able to compress the drive and it's now running much better.
 
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It seems like that I have a very similar problem.

Snapshot would not work/run indefinitely. If the reason was that the Guest OS was running: there had been no warning by the Snapshot Manager (a user can expect a warning, if this this is a inherent problem - PLEASE somebody of the Parallels staff confirm this).

I then went on to manually delete the snapshots. As as test: I created a snapshot, and deleted it while the Guest OS was not running. Snapshot manager confirms that there are no snapshots available.

HOWEVER, Parallels Compressor does not run telling me there might be snapshots and that I should check it.
 
Hello,

Kraken, thank you for posting the information that can be useful for others.

Bernhard.parallels, please try the following:

1. Shut down the virtual machine. Click Start and choose Shut Down.
2. Close Parallels.
3. Browse to the Applications - Parallels folder and start Parallels Image Tool.
4. Choose the required virtual hard disk of the virtual machine and choose the "merge snapshots" option. This will take a while.
5. Delete the snapshot folder and snapshots.xml file located in the virtual machine folder (Documents - Parallels - virtual machine folder - snapshots folder)
6. Open Parallels and the virtual machine.
7. Try to compress the virtual disk once again.

Best regards,
Xenos
 
Just wanted to add one more quick note. It took about 1.5 hours for Image tool to complete the snapshot merge and conversion. I have a Mac Pro tower 2.66 GHz with 2GB RAM. Took the drive image from 93GB to 40GB. I'm compacting the drive now and it looks like it will take about 45 minutes.
 
Hi Xenos,

thanks for getting back on this.

To double-check: you would advise to use the Parallels Image Tools in order to merge snapshots, although I already deleted them manually (as stated in my post)??? And afterwards I am supposed to delete them manually again?

Best,
Bernhard
 
Hello,

Bernhard, yes you should use Image Tool even if you can not see the snapshots - this operation is required before you run Compressor. You will not have to delete any snapshots manually after using Image Tool.

Best regards,
Xenos
 
Hi Xenos,
I followed instructions from Tools/Delete Snapshot (led there by the message window generated by trying Compressor from the Tools menu). Incidentally, Tools/Run Parallels Compressor directed me to ensure that the VM WAS running, which seems to contradict your message that I am responding to. I started the Snapshot Manager from Tools and started the Delete, but > 30 minutes is elapsing. Will this succeed? If not, must I reset the VM? Thanks.
 
HELP: Started a Snapshot and 4 hrs later it is still running

I started a Snapshot and 4 hrs later it is still running. I can't shut Parallels down: I can't do anything. I force-quited it, but when I start Parallels again it is still in the Snapshot mode.
How can I get my VM back? :-(

I'm on a MacPro with 16GB memory. The guest OS is Vista Business 64 Service Pack 1.
 
over an hour for 1 snapshot and still going...

This was totally unexpected. It has been over an hour to delete 1 snapshot. I need to get my computer back. Is this normal or is something wrong. What should I do? No one has said how long to expect this process to take.
I am using the latest build of Parallels 4 and Windows XP.

Thanks.
 
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