Virtual disk looks like it is full but it is not

[PaloMarek]

Hello,

I have a issue with vitrual machine (win7x64) on my IMac. I seted up disk size to 200G during installation (not pre-allocated) and setup 110G RAM and 6 cores to share with. Later I installed Ansys which I'm using for trainings and windows in VM shows that there is only 20G free of space (and when I check all folders on C drive in VM is shows 55G). So 125G is somewhere away :(... This makes me trouble with ansys calculations because they failed with error message "no disk space".

I bought latest VMware Fusion professional version 12.2.1

The first think I tried was to use clean up tool in VMware setting but it save only 25M.

Please, if you have any ideas how to fix this issue I will be happy

Have a great evening.   

[a_p_]

From what I understand, you're missing disk space within the guest OS?

What's the size of the Windows pagefile? What does dir c:\ /as show?

André

[Technogeezer]

Also, what does Windows Disk Management say about the partitions that are configured in your virtual hard drive. 

[Technogeezer]

Thinking about this and re-reading  's post, I agree that it's likely that Windows has set up a pagefile for you based on the memory that the virtual machine thinks it has.

Also see if your Windows VM is set up with hibernation active in Windows (in the guest, not Fusion). Some resources I've seen say that if Windows hibernation is active, the c:\hiberfile.sys that's configured can be sized by default from 45-75% of your system's memory (depending on the Windows version). As an example, on my Windows 10 laptop that has 8GB of memory, the hiberfile.sys is a shade over 3GB. 

In any case, I hope that your iMac has more than 6 cores and 128GB of memory. If not, you stand a very real chance of  starving the Mac for both cpu and (more importantly) memory which will impact performance of the entire system.

 

[ColoradoMarmot]

OMG I missed that.  Always leave 4GB for the host (2GB is the bare minimum).  Never, ever, exceed physical memory in a guest if you don't want the whole system to start thrashing.

And related - don't give more than N-1 cores to any individual guest, where N is the *physical* cores in the machine.  So for a 6 core i7, it's 5 cores for the guest (4 is a better limit if you're running more than one guest).  Virtual/hyperthreaded cores don't count.

[PaloMarek]

Hello Technogeezer,

Yes, I have 128GB of RAM and 8 core i7 processor.

The virtual machine is setup to 110GB of RAM and 6 processor cores.

I unhided all hiden and system files on virtual disk and is shows file with name pagefile.sys with size 113G (see attached picture). Do you think should I simply delete it?

Thank you 

[continuum]

> The virtual machine is setup to 110GB of RAM and 6 processor cores.
If you remove the pagefile then expect that the VM crashes frequently when it runs out of free memory.
Also expect that this VM will take a very long time to be suspended or be resumed.

Honestly I have only one word for your setup: SABOTAGE

Ulli

[Technogeezer]

 is correct, simply removing the page file won’t fix the problem. First, if you haven’t adjusted the Windows page file settings it will be recreated on the boot disk. Second if you don’t have enough space for the page file if needed due to virtual memory usage, Windows will crash. 

The answer to your missing space question is that the space is not missing . It is being consumed by Windows due to your (virtual) machine memory configuration. . This is not a Fusion issue  and it would be the same on a physical machine with a 200GB disk and 110GB of memory. For virtual machines, you also have to consider  ’s concerns about bothhe time to suspend and resume the VM and disk space on the Mac to hold an extra 110 GB of memory that would be required.

Refer to Windows documentation and perhaps your application documentation as well on how to review and set the page file size and see if that helps you manage disk space better. Depending on how your Windows VM and applications use memory, you may have to add disk space to accommodate the page file use.

Adding another virtual disk to your VM may help the situation if you need to increase disk space rather than dealing with trying to expand a virtual disk (and the associated headaches of Windows having to repartition in order to use it). For example if I remember correctly, you can configure Windows to locate parts of its page file on another disk. Or see if you can configure your application to install and run on a second disk. 

[continuum]

When tuneing a VM for best performance it are not high numbers that do any good.
Only virtual RAM and virtual CPUs that are otherwise idle and unused will do any good.

Here is a wild guess
VM A
110 GB
6 vCPUs
 
VM B
8GB RAM
2 vCPU

I expect that overall performance of VM B is 8 times better than that of VM A.

Ulli

[Technogeezer]

Good point. I just did a quick search for “ansys system requirements” and came upon a document that recommends workstations have memory of 16GB minimum and 64GB+ recommended, 4 cores minimum and 2TB hard drive space. 

So it may be possible to run with less memory but your hard drive space is way below recommended and is contributing to the disk space complaints. 

You may have to experiment to find a configuration of the virtual machine that balances performance and resource consumption. Thankfully that’s easier to do on virtual than physical. 

[PaloMarek]

Thank you all for help and sharing your knowledge. I increased virtual drive to 1TB and solver is running like V6 engine

Have a great evening.

Pavol 

[PaloMarek]

Hello Andre,

I attached screenshot where you can see file size on mac disk and then real win size and wrong disk size.

Thank you for help.

p.