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== 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 maximum 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 may be shrunk. Before a ''pre-allocated'' disk 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.
