Thanks for the information. I think I might see something that could be your problem.
While looking over the Disk Management screen shot, I see that your virtual hard disk is 500GB but the C: drive only takes up about 64GB of that space. 436GB of disk space is unallocated to any file system and is unusable. It's likely that if you are running the file system at 58 GB full then a copy/paste of 7-8 GB worth of files to the VM from the host or performing a Windows Update may indeed fill up the C: drive. That may explain why Fusion would complain about copying files (via drag/drop) to the VM, running out of space in the guest while trying the copy, and then throwing that error message.
You should expand the C: drive to use that unallocated space. It's not straightforward how to do that because the Recovery partition you see on the Disk Management display sits between the C: drive and the unallocated space. Fortunately this article https://thedxt.ca/2023/06/moving-windows-recovery-partition-correctly/ tells you how to expand that C: drive using tools that are built into Windows. (Take a Fusion snapshot of the virtual machine before attempting the procedure... just in case...).
Original Message:
Sent: May 10, 2026 03:14 PM
From: Paul Heinrich
Subject: When my virtual 500 GB hard drive has only 8 GB in it, getting "Cannot write file to virtual machine" error message
You wrote:
>Please don't post screen shots of file listing information -
>they are difficult to search and/or otherwise process.
My mistake and apologies.
>Instead use the Terminal and common UNIX shell
>commands to generate listings, re-direct them to a file,
>zip up that file and post it as an attachment.
Could I make ascreen shot of the listing, OCR it, copy and'
paste the text, copyedit it, and sent the file as an attachement?
Or can you reccomend either a web page or video that explains
the steps in the specific process and provides reccomended /
specific Shell commands that I need to use?
The only course in programming was decades ago
that used punchcards. Even then, I got a "C" from a
charitable professor. I am hesitant, based on past
experience to touch the Termianl without a specific
set of instructions.
>Could you also collect, zip up, and post the files with
>the .log extension found in the VM bundle folder?
>We can make this easier by collecting a quick support
>bundle from Fusion and post that. To collect the support
>bundle, use the process that's in the Fusion documentation.
>From the Fusion menu bar, select Help > Collect Support
>Information > Quick. Use the "UPLOAD FILE" link to
>attach that to this discussion (it's found just above the
>"POST" button...
Got as far as Help > Collect Support >Information > Quick
Can't find either "UPLOAD FILE" or "POST" links. Thus, I
chose 1st method.
Request files are in attached zip file
>Can you open Disk Management in the Windows VM and
>post a screen shot of what that is showing?
Yes, it is attached.
>What versions of Fusion and macOS are you running?
MacOS - Tahoe 26.3.1
Fusion - Fusion-13.6.2-24409261
>And what version/build of Windows 11 ARM are you using?
Windows 11 64-bit Arm.vmwarevm (cannot find version number)
downloaded within 24 hours of Sunday, January 12, 2025 at 11:06 AM
>Just so I understand:
>You are trying to drag/drop files from the host Mac to the
>Windows Guest.
Yes
>If so, what are those files and how big are they
At about 63.1 GB of 536.87 GB, GIS shapefiles and PDFs as
small as 1.4 MB cause the "Cannot write file to virtual
machine" error message. 63.1 GB is also when Windows
automatically asks and warns me to manage storage
because of low disk capacity. File size downloadable is
approimately X GB, where data in GB on virtual '
machine = 63.1 GB - X GB
Note: 63.1 also appears on the Disk Management screenshot
for whatever that might or might not mean.
>The error message "Cannot write file to virtual machine" is
>being generated by Fusion and not Windows.
I would guess that it is Fuson because the Windows menu and
screen "greys" out and only the Fusion menu menu remains the
responsive ("clickable").
Original Message:
Sent: May 08, 2026 09:56 PM
From: Technogeezer
Subject: When my virtual 500 GB hard drive has only 8 GB in it, getting "Cannot write file to virtual machine" error message
We'll need a bit more information to try and figure out what's going on.
- The files with the .log extension found in the virtual machine's bundle file.
- A listing of the files contained in the VM's bundle folder.
- Listing of free disk space available on the Mac's host drive. Get the following 2 measurements: From the Finder, use "Get Info" on the disk where your VMs are stored. And open Disk Utility and get the information about free disk space on the disk containing your VMs there as well.
- Also from Disk Utility, verify if there are any APFS snapshots for the volume on which your VMs are stored. If they are on the system disk, the Data volume would be the one to look for.
- In Fusion, also check to see if there are any Fusion snapshots that are active.
7GB reported as used in a newly installed Windows 11 VM is very, very low, by the way.
------------------------------
Paul Rockwell (technogeezer)
vExpert 2026 (3x)