Remove unused space from a disk

Question

Hi,

I have a on-prem VM which has 500 GB of disk connected, it is hardly used, currently utilized around 30 GB.

Is there a way using "disk mirroring option" to reduce the total space and return remaining space back to datastore

eg: by attaching a new disk with 50 GB, adding it in mirror with existing 500 (GB) disk (not sure if size difference between 2 disks is acceptable before creating mirroring)

syncing the data, break the mirror and remove 500 GB disk

If there is any other way to optimize disk space/storage space, i would like to know...

Answer 1

Hi,

You don't need to do that to free up the unused space. If your virtual disk is dynamically expanding, you could just compact it. Open the Hyper-V Manager and select Edit Disk on the right, then locate your virtual disk and choose compact

Please refer to the below article for the details.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/askcore/compacting-a-dynamically-expanding-virtual-hard-disk-in-windows-server-2012

If your virtual disk is fixed, just convert it to dynamically expanding.

You'll have to shutdown your virtual machine before you do this.

Best Regards,
Ian

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