You can shrink and defragment certain virtual machines to free up space on your Mac.

When you delete files from your virtual machine, Fusion does not return the space to your Mac. Cleaning up the virtual machine performs the following operations:

  • Shrinks the virtual machine and returns freed space to your Mac.

    Note:

    Only Windows virtual machines return freed space to your Mac.

  • Defragments the virtual machine.

  • Consolidates any unconsolidated snapshot files left on the virtual machine.

    Unconsolidated snapshot files can be left on the virtual machine when manually deleting a snapshot fails.

Prerequisites

Shut down or power off the virtual machine. You cannot change the setting while the virtual machine is powered on or suspended.

Procedure

  1. Select Window > Virtual Machine Library.
  2. Select a virtual machine in the Virtual Machine Library window and click Settings.
  3. Under System Settings in the Settings window, click General.
  4. Click Clean Up Virtual Machine.

    This option is only available when a Windows virtual machine has disk space to reclaim, or when any virtual machine has unconsolidated snapshot files.

Results

Fusion displays a progress dialog box as it cleans up the virtual machine.