virtualbox.org

Folks,

I have created a virtual hard disk to SATA controller with fixed size of 200G. I have deleted "MyVirtualHD.vdi" file from my primary OS Windows7 and the 200G space was not released from my physical HD. I gained back only 14G of space. Can anyone help me out how to reclaim 200G of space which was used by "MyVirtualHD.vdi" virtual disk.

Thanks,
Alex

There are three levels of removing a drive in VirtualBox. Level one (the least) means that the drive is removed from the virtual disk controller (SATA in your case), but VirtualBox still remembers the drive. level 2 is telling VirtualBox to forget the drive as well, and level 3 is deleting the VDI file from your hosts drive - in which case the drive and all its data is gone for good - only after level 3 do you get the host drive space back.

I think you only did level 1, although maybe you did level 2 as well. You didn't do level 3.

To check - go into File | Virtual Media Manager, and look for the drive in the list.

o If the drive is there then highlight it. The "Release" button should be grayed out, but click it if it isn't. Now click the "Remove" button. At some point you will be asked if you want to delete the physical file as well (ie, do level 3?) - answer yes to that.

o If the drive is NOT there then you already removed it, but you previously answered no to the level 3 question. In that case you can find the VDI file in the VM folder, which is usually <UserDocuments>\VirtualBox VMs\<VM Name>, assuming you are using VirtualBox v4.x. You can use the host OS to delete the file from that folder.

Thanks for your reply.

1. I have deleted the .vdi file from my host OS (Windows 7) physical HDD.

2. When i opened Virtual Box it asked to remove the SATA HDD as it became invalid. So i have removed it from the error message pop up itself.

3. Now i don't see any file with .vdi extension in my physical HDD.

Please let me know how to fix this.

Note: In Virtual Media Manager there are no drives found to remove.

Thanks,
Alex

If you deleted the VDI from your host hard disk then it would no longer occupy disk space. It's just a file, nothing special about it at all, except of course for the unusually large size. I would remind you to empty your recycle bin, but I assume you know to do that, and in any case humungous files don't normally go there otherwise I would have mentioned it before.

There are freeware tools available online to help you find the biggest space hogs on a drive. Perhaps you might find them useful.

Otherwise, I feel that I already gave you a complete answer.

Alexker wrote:Folks,

I have created a virtual hard disk to SATA controller with fixed size of 200G. I have deleted "MyVirtualHD.vdi" file from my primary OS Windows7 and the 200G space was not released from my physical HD. I gained back only 14G of space. Can anyone help me out how to reclaim 200G of space which was used by "MyVirtualHD.vdi" virtual disk.

Thanks,
Alex

Hi Alex, I did allocated memory using Virtualbox dynamically and but unfortunately could not complete the installation of ubantu. Then I released memory and uninstalled the VirtualBox. Still my drive shows its full, in fact there are no files in the drive. Can you please assist me how to release that memory if you have done this.

Thanks,
SamiK

RaviK wrote:Hi Alex

Hi Alex??? Alex's last visit was in 2011, same time as the thread. I highly doubt that they're going to reply.

SamiK, please do not try to resurrect old threads, let them rest in peace. I'm going to lock this one. Please open a new thread where you're going to be explaining your problem in a little bit more detail, because from your description here I could not understand what your problem was.

Please also read the following: Minimum information needed for assistance.