guest taking too much room

[Todd Douthit]

I have vmware fusion 13, running a windows 11 ARM on mac silicon. the guest drive c was getting full so i extended the drive size.  not realizing that i needed to allocate it, and "C" dod not get larger, i extended it again.  now i have this huge 536gb unallocated drive that i cannot get rid of.  i cant make "C" bigger (possibly because of the recovery partition to the right of it.

i don't know what to do here to get rid of the 536gb drive and make "C" about 100gb.

Please HELP!!

Broadcom said:

Step 1: Boot Windows and Download a Cloning Tool
1. Power on your Windows Virtual Machine.
2. Inside Windows, open your web browser and download a free disk cloning utility such as Macrium Reflect Free, Hasleo Disk Clone, or AOMEI Backupper Standard.

Step 2: Clone the Disk Inside Windows
1. Open your cloning software and select Disk Clone.
2. Select Source: Choose your original 600 GB Disk (Disk 0).
3. Select Target/Destination: Choose your new 100 GB Disk (Disk 1).
4. Select Partitions: Make sure all boot/system partitions (e.g., EFI System Partition, Recovery Partition, and main C: drive) are selected to be cloned.
5. Adjust Partition Size: Extend the C: partition so that it fills out the remaining available space on the new 100 GB drive.
6. Start the Clone: Let the cloning process complete.

Step 3: Swap Disks in VMware Fusion
1. Shut down Windows completely (do not suspend or hibernate).
2. Go to VMware Fusion → Virtual Machine Settings (⌘E) → Hard Disk.
3. Select your old 600 GB Hard Disk.
4. Click Remove Hard Disk (or the minus - button). When prompted, select Move to Trash (or do this after confirming the VM boots).
5. Power on the VM. Windows will now boot cleanly directly off your new 100 GB virtual drive.

After following Technogeezer's advice, i had some success but still think vmware is using a ton of disk space.  see pictures.

[Technogeezer]

The first thing I'd do is to check the settings for the virtual disk in the Fusion GUI.

• Open the Settings for the VM.
• Click on "Hard Disk (NVMe).
• Click on "Advanced options" and check that "Split into multiple files" is checked, and "Pre-allocate disk space" is not checked.

If the virtual disk is not split into multiple files and the disk space is pre-allocated, then using an in-guest cloning utility is probably the best way forward.

However, if the virtual disk is split into multiple files and is not pre-allocated, there's an easier way forward.

Follow the advice in Daniel Keer's article "Moving Windows Recovery Partition Correctly" https://thedxt.ca/2023/06/moving-windows-recovery-partition-correctly/ to move the recovery partition (in your case, the 876MB partition that's labeled as "Recovery") to the end of the disk. 

Once you've done that, use Disk Management in Windows to expand the partition containing the C: drive to the 100GB that you desire. You do not need to add the entire unallocated space to the C: drive. Only the extra amount that you want.

At this point, you're done. 

But, you ask, I still have a virtual disk of 600GB? Won't that eat up space on my Mac?

The answer: No.

Why? Configuring the disk as "split into multiple pieces: and not setting  "pre-allocate space" means that the virtual disk is thinly provisioned. Space on your Mac's hard drive will only be allocated and assigned to one of the pieces of the virtual disk when written to by the VM. Unallocated space will not be written by the VM and therefore will not cause macOS to assign disk space to your VM. 

Even if you fill up the C: drive in 100GB VM, the virtual disk should only take up somewhere around 100GB of disk space (exclusive, of course, of any Fusion snapshots that you might create). I say "around" because the recovery partition will take up some additional disk space. But assuming no snapshots, the virtual disk will never approach the 600GB limit that you've set the virtual disk size to. 

So there's no penalty to over-allocating with thinly provisioned disks. As long as you keep unassigned space.

One advantage to this is that you can easily expand the C: drive in the future should tne need arise. You won't have to go back to expanding the virtual disk in Fusion unless you want to expand past 600 GB.

Another advantage is that you can temporarily expand the C: drive. Take a snapshot of the VM then expand the C: drive partition from within the VM using Disk Management. Run whatever you want. When done, remove the snapshot. The C: drive will "shrink' back to its original size. - and the extra space you used for the disk expansion will be returned to macOS.