With the virtual machine powered off, select it and click “Edit virtual machine settings”, or right-click it and select “Settings”.Ĭlick the “Hard Disk” option in the device list on the Hardware tab.įirst, click the “Defragment” button under Disk utilities to defragment the virtual machine’s disk. You can’t compact its disk if it’s powered on or suspended. In VMware Player, first power off your virtual machine. VMware Player doesn’t have the convenient “Clean Up Disk” button you’ll see in paid VMware products, but you can still do this with a few options in its interface. Check whether the “Pre-allocate disk space” option under Advanced options is checked or not. On VMware Fusion, select a virtual machine and click Virtual Machine > Settings > Hard Disk > Advanced options. Check whether it says “Preallocated” next to the disk’s size in the Summary view or not.
On VMware Workstation or VMware Player, right-click a virtual machine and select “Settings”. VMware Player can only create growable disks, VMware Fusion always uses growable disks unless you allocate the disk space in a virtual machine’s settings after creating it, and VMware Workstation creates growable disks unless you go into the custom settings and check “Allocate all disk space now” while creating a new virtual machine. Your virtual machine probably has a growable disk, though. Preallocated disks are always their maximum size. If you have a preallocated disk you want to compact, you’ll need to convert it to a growable disk before continuing.
This process only works with growable, or “sparse”, disks.
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RELATED: How to Convert Between Preallocated and Growable Disks in VMware First, Ensure You’re Not Using a Preallocated Disk