Shrinked free space from Hyper-V VM is not appearing in host machine

Question

Hello All,

I have a VM server running on Hyper-V 2012 R2. I want to reduce the space from D-Drive around 1TB out of 1.8TB. I have shrink the space after shutdown the VM and it was done. VM server showing the new size of 800GB, but the free space of 1TB is not showing in my host server. Still the VM size is 1.8TB showing in Windows file explorer.

Please help us to get the unallocated space from VM into the Hyper-V host server.

Thanks in advance...

S.K. Samy

Answer 1

Thanks Patrick & Yuhan,

I was already shrink the VHDX disk inside VM using DISK MGMT and it was showing the free space as unallocated. I have shutdown the VM and resized (shrink again) the disk from Hyper-V manager using VM disk edit settings. It was completed successfully, but still that actual size of the VM after shrink (800GB) was not reflected in file size when I checked in the file properties (1.8TB).

Also the shrink space of 1TB is not appearing/adding into my host server HDD space.

Thanks in advance if anyone provide me the solution.

Answer 2

After you Resize-VHD then you'll need to Optimize-VHD.

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Answer 3

Hi Samy,
To shrink a volume you can refer to this:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/disk-management/shrink-a-basic-volume

Also as Patrick has mentioned, to apply the changes you made to the disk, you need to optimize it after resizing.
For resizing:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/hyper-v/resize-vhd?view=windowsserver2019-ps

And for optimizing:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/hyper-v/optimize-vhd?view=windowsserver2019-ps

Thanks for your Time.
Best regards,
Danny

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Answer 4

Hi Samy,
Maybe you can refer to this:
https://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/shrink-hyper-v-virtual-disk-vhd-vhdx/
Please note: Information posted in the given link is hosted by a third party. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy and effectiveness of information.

If it doesn’t work, you might want to try Powershell commands:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/shrink

Thanks for your Time.
Best regards,
Danny

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Answer 5

Just checking if there's any progress or updates?

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