I have a virtual machine running Ubuntu 12.04 which I created using Hyper-V in a Windows 8.1 host. At one point, I had a very large file in my virtual machine which caused my dynamically expanding hard drive to grow to almost 200 GB. Since then, I have removed the file and I am trying to shrink the hard drive file back down. As you can see from this screenshot of GParted from within Ubuntu, I am not using a lot of disk storage:
I tried using the "compact disk" option within Hyper-V settings; however, this did not affect the size of the vhdx file in the host which remains close to 200 GB in size. I also tried following these instructions for using Windows' diskpart utility, but this also had no effect. Am I missing something? Is there something else I can try?
1 Answer
I strongly suggest you take the steps to make a copy of the .vhdx before you modify it. In order to change the size of an existing .vhdx file the first thing you should do is mount the virtual hdd by using the command: mount-vhd in an elevated PowerShell command prompt.
mount-vhd \\FS01\vmdata\AS02_C.vhdx -passthru | get-disk | get-partition | get-volume
The output of the command will look like
If you want to change the size of one of the partitions by using: resize-partition in an elevated PowerShell command prompt.
resize-partition -driveletter E -size 35GB
Before you can change the size of the virtual hdd you will have use the command: dismount-vhd in an elevated PowerShell command prompt.
dismount-vhd \\FS01\vmdata\AS02_C.vhdx
Once you have modifyed the partition size and dismounted the virtual hdd. You can modify the size of the virtual hdd by using the command: resize-vhd in an elevated PowerShell command prompt.
resize-vhd \FS01\vmdata\AS02_C.vhdx -ToMinimumSize
Working with and resizing Windows Server 2012 VHDsResize-VHD
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