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Compress macOS VMDK


David-B
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I am running macOS in a VMware Virtual Machine on Windows 10, and would like to reduce the size of my VMDK. The VMDK was originally for an older version of macOS, and I wanted a clean start, so I wiped the virtual drive using these instructions. After a complete reinstall, I want to reduce the size of the VMDK since so much space is being wasted even though there's nothing on the drive at all other than the operating system. When I try using VMware to defrag and compress the disk though, I immediately get a message saying that the process was completed, but the disk size remains the same. How can I get the compression process to actually work?

 

I am using VMware Workstation Pro 14, if that makes a difference.

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To shrink your VMware macOS virtual disk, execute the following command from the Terminal app:

 

sudo /Library/Application\ Support/VMware\ Tools/vmware-tools-cli disk shrink /

Okay, so do this, and then I should be able to do the defrag and compress on the host?

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I doubt you will defrag the file system. This will help recover and compress unused space. http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/308367-how-to-shrink-os-x-vmdk/

Yeah, I was wondering if perhaps the defrag would not work since I'm using macOS High Sierra which means the VM uses APFS. As for the link you provided, I tried doing it, but it did not work. Perhaps this is because I was booted in to recovery mode.

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