• When you using dynamically growing disk in VMware then they grow, but don't reduce its size when you delete files in the virtual machine.
• That's only interesting when you are using VMware Workstation in the server versions the default is a full allocated disk.

• For example a vmdk file with max size 8 GB starts after installation with a size of 1 GB.
• Now you copy 1 GB files into the virtual machine then, as anyone can imagine, the vmdk has a size of 2 GB but after the copied files the size is still 2 GB.
• So it could happen that you have 3 GB data in the VM but the vmdk file has a size of 8 GB.

• To shrink the disk to the size of the content you need installed VMware-Tools.

Tested with VMware Workstation 6.5.1 and Windows XP

• This text is translated from a German test-system perhaps other terms are used in an English system.

1. Open VMware-Tools configuration (double click the symbol in the taskbar).
2. there you see an option to shrink the disk.
3. select “prepare to shrink” … this could take a long time depending on the size of the disk and its fragmentation.

• Afterwards all disks will be reduced of the contents size (if you have more than one).
• In my tests the selection of a special disk was ignored.