1,798
edits
Changes
→Shrinking a Virtual Disk
Shrinking a virtual disk involves the reduction in size of a virtual disk image file by discarding unallocated space in the virtual disk. The process reduces the amount of space the virtual disk uses on the host, but does not change the size of the disk as far as the guest operating systems which use the disk are concerned. When more disk space is needed by a guest, VMware will automatically increase the size of the virtual disk file accordingly, until the maximize specified size of the virtual disk is reached.
The amount by which a virtual disk file can be reduced depends entirely on the amount of unallocated space available and cannot be specified by the user. Only ''growable'' virtual disks on Windows hosts may be shrunk. It is not currently possible to shrink a virtual disk on a Linux host. Before a ''pre-allocated'' disk on a Windows Host can be shrunk it must first be converted using the steps outlined previously in this chapter. A further restriction is that there must be no snapshots of the virtual disk. If snapshots exist, they should be removed prior to performing the shrink operation.
Assuming the virtual disk to be shrunk is a "growable" disk and is on a Windows host, the first step is to prepare the virtual disk for shrinking. To do this, the disk must be mounted with a drive letter on the Windows host. This can be achieved using the ''VMware DiskMount Tool'' which is available for download from [http://www.vmware.com/download/ws/#utilities www.vmware.com/download/ws/#utilities]. Once installed, a virtual disk may be mounted using a command similar to the following:
