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In VMware Workstation 10 I can go to the VM menu, Manage, "Clean Up Disks..." and then magically, it will reclaim a ton of space.

What I don't understand is how the resulting folder for my VM is now only 80.1 GB. If I boot Windows in the VM and view the disk usage, it's about 91 GB. How is this possible?

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  • What do you mean by "view the disk usage"? Mar 28, 2014 at 15:43
  • @DavidSchwartz Probably Windows Explorer, Properties of volume (the pie chart)
    – Daniel Beck
    Mar 28, 2014 at 15:47
  • @DanielBeck Correct. The same method I'm using the view the size of the folder of the VM on the host. Not that that's significant.
    – Sam Rueby
    Mar 28, 2014 at 15:53

2 Answers 2

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Perhaps something made a file within the filesystem that actually consists of lots of zeros? If this were the case then the inner filesystem's usage may be bigger than that of the outer VMDK containing it because VMware may detect runs of zeros and essentially store them in a more efficient manner within the file representing the VMDK. Not all data is equal...

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First result from Google

When you delete files from your virtual machine, the disk space occupied by those files is not immediately returned to your host system. If a virtual disk has such empty space, you can use the Clean up disks command to return that space to the hard drive on a Microsoft Windows host.

The Clean up disks command is similar to the Compact command in the Workstation virtual machine settings and the shrink command provided by VMware Tools. The Clean up disks command has these advantages:

You can use the Clean up disks command with virtual machines that have snapshots or are linked clones or parents of a linked clone.

The Clean up disks command reclaims more disk space than the Compact command. The Clean up disks command reclaims disk space from the current state of the virtual machine, from any powered-off snapshots, and from any powered-on snapshots where the guest operating system is Windows XP or later and you have installed a version of VMware Tools that is compatible with Workstation 8 or later.

Unlike the Defragment command and the shrink command provided by VMware Tools, the Clean up disks command does not require any extra disk space on the host. The Clean up disks command operates directly on the virtual disk (.vmdk) files.

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  • Also in the future please review the tips on asking questions and have researched the question before asking. This is most likely why someone down voted this question. Mar 28, 2014 at 15:15
  • Pretty sure you missed the point here. The question is regarding how the resulting VM files (including, the one representing the entire disk) is smaller than what the VM believes it is.
    – Sam Rueby
    Mar 28, 2014 at 15:35
  • Thin provisioning Mar 29, 2014 at 2:49
  • Then provisioning is about having a 120GB "disk" but if only 80GB is used then it only takes up 80GB of space. The situation here is 91GB of data is taking 80.1 GB of space.
    – Sam Rueby
    Apr 22, 2015 at 12:29
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    The only thing that comes to mind that may explain this is that a snapshot had taken place at a point when the hard drive was 80GB and there would have been another file with the changed blocks since the snapshot was taken that would contain the other data. That's the most plausible answer. Sorry this is late. Apr 22, 2015 at 12:56

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