Shrinking VHDX unallocated space

Question

Shrinking VHDX unallocated space

G_ary 1

I recently added 1TB to a 2TB vhdx disk not realizing the disk was MBR, so the extra 1TB was not accessible, I then shrunk it back down to 2TB and lost 200,000 files which makes no sense because there was no data in the 1TB of unallocated space. I simply shrank it back down to the original size of 2TB. I am now restoring the VM to before the shrink but I still want to release the 1TB of unallocated space but not have the same thing happen. Would using resize-vhd -tominimumsize make a difference over using the GUI, or is there something else I should be doing.

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Answer 1

Anonymous

Some useful info here.
https://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/shrink-hyper-v-virtual-disk-vhd-vhdx/

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G_ary 1 Reputation point

2020-11-27T21:52:08.883+00:00

This link says PowerShell is the only tool that you can use for shrinking the vhdx. Not sure what that statement was based on because it contradicts Microsoft documentation for shrinking a vhdx. At best it is another option but maybe there is something more to it. Although it does go on to say, shrink does not always work as expected.

Answer 2

The Network Company 116

In order to shrink space, the low level data needs to read zero. Microsoft's sdelete can be used to achieve this with the -z switch

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Shrinking VHDX unallocated space

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