Did VHDX really shrink?

Question

Server 2012R2 running Hyper-V
Hyper-V server 2012R2 (SQLserver2012)

OK, I followed the process to shrink the VHDX to free up space.

Here is VM disk Partition:

This is the Get-VHD that shows the before & after of the shrink command and the file explore winnow Did it shrink physically or not?

Answer 1

Yes, that should be correct.
https://www.sikich.com/insight/how-to-compact-dynamic-vhd-and-vhdx-files-in-hyper-v-2012-and-newer/

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Answer 2

A couple of things;

• The shrink operation fails if it would shrink the virtual disk to less than its minimum size (available through the VHDX object's MinimumSize property).
  • If the virtual disk file connects to a virtual machine's IDE chain, you cannot resize the virtual disk while the virtual machine is online. If the virtual disk file connects to a virtual machine's SCSI chain, you can resize the virtual disk while the virtual machine is online.

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

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Answer 3

Hi,
For your reference:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/disk-management/shrink-a-basic-volume

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Answer 4

Any progress or updates?

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Answer 5

OK,

Please look at the attachments

1. I successfuly shrunk the partition on the VM machine SQL2012. If I took a screen shot before the Resize-VHD command, it would have show unallocated space at the end of the partition
2. I executed the Resize-VHD command and it executed successfully, as shown
3. the post Resize-VHD shows Size shrinking to 166GB

Why did the Get-VHD file size not shrink as well. The file explorer still shows the file as 300+ GB. I need to recover space on the drive ASAP.