Help with Clean Up Disks… not working in VMware

[Einar104]

My Host and Guest OS are both Windows 10 Pro.

My Guest OS consists of 5 virtual disks.

I am using VMware Workstation 17 Pro version17.6.3 build-24583834

 

Clean Up Disk was stuck on - Reclaimable space: 554.4 GB 

Never getting - Cleanup is not necessary

 

At that point - Disk space used by the virtual machine was: 1.7 TB

 

Does anyone know of software that can repair corrupt VMDK files?

I have only found software that can check for errors and recover data

from damaged VMDK files.

 

In lieu of such software I fixed my problem as follows.

 

After some research I found that the problem with Clean Up Disk not working had to do with:

Hard Disk 2 (NMVe) 2 TB (in Virtual Machine Settings) - Current Size 1.2 TB, and

In Windows Properties (in the Guest OS) the Used space was only 636 GB.

 

I then Removed Hard Disk 2 (in Virtual Machine Settings), and

moved the associated VMDK files to a temporary folder.

 

After this Clean Up Disk yielded:

Disk space used by this virtual machine: 551,4 GB

- CLEANUP IS NOT NECESSARY

 

Then after adding a NEW virtual disk and another using an EXISTING virtual disk

- i.e. the VMDK files that I had moved to a temporary folder.

 

I booted the Guest OS, and after some Disk Management, I copied everything

from my old to my new disk volume. 

 

Finally after shutting down the Guest OS I removed the EXISTING virtual disk.

 

Now Clean Up Disk yielded:

  Disk space used by this virtual machine: 1.2 GB

- Reclaimable space 64 KB

 

NOT - Cleanup is not necessary

but OK!

 

Size in Virtual Machine Settings reduced from 1.7 TB to 1.2 TB i.e. by 0.5 TB

Size on disk reduced from 1,70 TB to 1.15 TB i.e. by 0.55 TB

 

With my Guest OS running I have:

1)

Run CHKDSK on all disk volumes with the following switches: /F /R

a.

After system restart, when running CHKDSK C: /F /R

Windows has made corrections to the file system.

No further action is required.

b.

And when running CHKDSK on ALL the other disk volumes

Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems.

No further action is required.

c.

And all ended with:  0 KB in bad sectors.

.

My Hard Disk 2 (NMVe) 2 TB has Drive Letter E:\

2)

Run Windows Disk Cleanup on ALL disk volumes

a.

On all disk volumes, except C:\

You don't need to scan this drive.

b.

Disk Clean Up  for WinOS (C:)

Total amount of disk soace you gain 4.16 GB

c.

I have also in Virtual Machine Settings Defragmented and Compacted ALL virtual drives.

.

But none of these actions remedied my problem.

[Morc001]

Windows "Disk Clean-up" will not fix your problem with virtual disks, nor will chkdsk or any host disk cleanup/fixing utility, unless the host is crashing while the VM is running, or the storage has some issues and data loss occures. Please upload a screenshot of the folder showing all files in the VM's folder, including their size, while the VM is running! The "Details" view should do that nicely. And how much data you have on those virtual disks, what the Windows guest shows? How much RAM is allocated to the VM, and how much RAM is free on the host before the VM starts up?

[Einar104]

I have uploaded a word-document INFO.docx with the following indormation.

Showing problem with Manage > Clean Up Disks…

All WMDK files at the time of problem! Problem WMDK in red

Free RAM on the host before the VM starts up

RAM allocated to the VM

"screenshot" showing all files in the VM's folder, including their size, while the VM is running.

Data on virtual disks, what the Windows guest shows.

[Morc001]

I see no file attached to this thread or your post, but I'm not Broadcom employee either, so maybe the public can't see such files. You can upload the file to Google Drive, or OneDrive and share that and copy the link to it, maybe.

OK, I checked what this "Clean Up Disks..." thing is and realized that it's the same thing as compact. Compact can only compact your disk if there's at least as much free space on the host drive where the disk resides as much actual space is used by the VM, because the clean up process will "clone" the disk first by removing the unused parts, then deletes the original file and renames the new to the old. So if you have 2TB free space and the VM uses more than 1TB disk space actually, then you'll not be able to compact (clean up) the VM's disk. 

[Einar104]

I don't think disk space is an issue. The virtual machine is on a 4TB SSD drive by itself.

Here is the link to the word-document: INFO.docx

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AqetCyyeRFo8xkVu8wYV-RFB8JoNLKjJ/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=109296553659839726067&rtpof=true&sd=true

[Morc001]

OK, your problem is that when you created the VM/vitual disks you left the option "Split virtual disk into multiple files" selected:


If you have easily copiable data on the disks create new virtual disks but select store as single file, copy all the data and delete the old disk. Make sure to delete the files as well, not just remove the disk from the VM. In VMWare Workstation there are no tools to to convert the VMDK from one format to another, but you can do that with VirtualBox. Cloning the VM does not allow to change the disk type either.

[Einar104]

The Word-document appears truncated!

[RaSystemlord]

No and no.

I didn't read everything that was in the .doc, but you are running Disk Cleanup in Windows and you are expecting to get a smaller file in VMware, right? That is: Simply No. Read my previous post how to Clean Up, if you want to really clean up your data.

If you want to get a smaller file in VMware, run Compact Disk in VMware, not in Windows.

Having multiple files does NOT prevent running Compact Disk and getting a smaller total amount of file space on the disk. You have non-allocated disk space, according to the Word, and that is what is released with Compact.

To use a single file, it makes handling with files just harder and a more vulnerable system. Previously, if you wanted to have something like a fast Oracle DB, having a single file gave faster database operations on HDD. I'm not sure if on SDD you get any benefit. In a regular case, there is no benefit using a single file.

[Einar104]

Here is a link to a text-document: INFO-S-1.TXT

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TxFKlefMbhXsMAmy-riRDF2wEy1JC7-t/view?usp=sharing

This is the - "screenshot" showing all files in the VM's folder, including their size, while the VM is running - part of INFO.docx file.

[Einar104]

The Word-document appears truncated - only when viewed on Google Drive.

When downloaded it isn't truncated!

Thank for all advice!

But is there no software that can fix problems with: Clean Up Disks... not working?

I have had to do what I did this time, one time before - then it was pretty obvious that the WMDK file was in error!

With problems appearing when coping file in the virtual machine itself.

[RaSystemlord]

As for cleaning disks - I already gave a rather comprehensive answer what to do. There is no Windows software that can ever anticipate all that I suggested. And it has nothing to do with VMware - it is about Windows. And it has nothing (directly( to do with freeing up space on the physical disk.

As for .vmdk-file, it is an ASCII file. I pretty much doubt that it is corrupted as a file. If it has wrong information, most likely VM doesn't open at all.

In all cases, wrong information in .vmdk does not cause copying VM computer to fail. Nothing that you have said will. There are three basic reasons for copying to fail:
- you are allocating some VM computer files by keeping the GUI in VMware Pro open for that VM (I take it that you are not trying to copy when the actual VM is open)

- your target is bad
- you are trying to use Windows GUI when there is something wrong in the workflow (like bad networking or bad USB or whatever). You need to use robocopy for a reliable copying (basic example from Command Prompt: "robocopy /e /v /Z c:\VMs\MyVM1\ d:\backup\VMs\" ... where the directories are example and assuming that your target doesn't have MyVM1 for some other VM. As such, there are many other uses and possibilities for robocopy

[Morc001]

You're misunderstanding/not knowing (as I did not know either), that the VM's right-click menu also has a "Clean Up Disks..." menu item under Manager, which is not the Windows' "Disk Clean-up" utility. "Clean Up Disks..." is what is showing reclaimable space, but does not reclaim space. I thought VMWare can't compact split VMDKs, only single file disks, but you claim it can. Directory listing does not show snapshosts, so I'm out of ideas.

[RaSystemlord]

OK, I see now what you mean by VMware Cleanup Disks. Anyway, the end results is the same, no space on the disk is freed up.

I use splitted disks all the time and Compacting works. Obviously, I don't know about possible bugs in later versions.

[Morc001]

Try cloning the VM and see how the clone's disk usage turns out.

[Einar104]

Thank you for the VM cloning advise.

I will try that the next time I encounter problem with Manage > Disk Clean Up…

I have never cloned a VM before – but I will try now on a smaller VM to learn how it's done.

Also I don't know when this turned up: Tread has one or more attached files, Viz

With it, using Google Drive would not have been necessary.