- Local time
- 2:37 AM
- Posts
- 5,749
- OS
- Windows 10 Pro + others in VHDs
As anybody who knows about dynamically vhdx files will be aware is if you delete stuff or do disk cleanup e.g. to remove Windows.old, although the spaced is logically freed, it is not physically removed as far as host OS is concerned.
The upshot is the vhdx files just keep growing until they meet the maximum size and then behave more like a fixed size vhdx file.
There is a clean option you can use to attempt to reclaim this space but it does not work that well, hardly saving anything.
I experimented with a variety of methods and decided cloning vhdx file to another new vhdx file would be easier using Macrium Reflect.
I tried this and found it could be temperamental in reclaiming space i.e. it only fully reclaims space if new vhdx is rather smaller then original. I attribute that to the fact when you clone a system using Reflect to the same size drive, it does not "defrag" the clone i.e. some of that unclaimed space also gets copied.
So I tried an experiment by creating same size vhdx file, but deliberately reducing size of drive partition as shown below (drag and drop efi, msr, C drive, right click on C drive and reduce it in size, then drag and drop recover partition)
I then cloned it and the original vhdx file which had grown to around 69 GB was reduced to just over 45 GB.
It was then a simple matter using minitool to move recovery partition to end, and then expand C drive to fill all unallocated space.
I tried this method on several vhdx's and it worked 100% reliably in all cases.
The upshot is the vhdx files just keep growing until they meet the maximum size and then behave more like a fixed size vhdx file.
There is a clean option you can use to attempt to reclaim this space but it does not work that well, hardly saving anything.
I experimented with a variety of methods and decided cloning vhdx file to another new vhdx file would be easier using Macrium Reflect.
I tried this and found it could be temperamental in reclaiming space i.e. it only fully reclaims space if new vhdx is rather smaller then original. I attribute that to the fact when you clone a system using Reflect to the same size drive, it does not "defrag" the clone i.e. some of that unclaimed space also gets copied.
So I tried an experiment by creating same size vhdx file, but deliberately reducing size of drive partition as shown below (drag and drop efi, msr, C drive, right click on C drive and reduce it in size, then drag and drop recover partition)
I then cloned it and the original vhdx file which had grown to around 69 GB was reduced to just over 45 GB.
It was then a simple matter using minitool to move recovery partition to end, and then expand C drive to fill all unallocated space.
I tried this method on several vhdx's and it worked 100% reliably in all cases.
My Computer
System One
-
- OS
- Windows 10 Pro + others in VHDs
- Computer type
- Laptop
- Manufacturer/Model
- ASUS Vivobook 14
- CPU
- I7
- Motherboard
- Yep, Laptop has one.
- Memory
- 16 GB
- Graphics Card(s)
- Integrated Intel Iris XE
- Sound Card
- Realtek built in
- Monitor(s) Displays
- N/A
- Screen Resolution
- 1920x1080
- Hard Drives
- 1 TB Optane NVME SSD, 1 TB NVME SSD
- PSU
- Yep, got one
- Case
- Yep, got one
- Cooling
- Stella Artois
- Keyboard
- Built in
- Mouse
- Bluetooth , wired
- Internet Speed
- 72 Mb/s :-(
- Browser
- Edge mostly
- Antivirus
- Defender
- Other Info
- TPM 2.0