Windows 10 Guest keeps filling disk

Discussions about using Windows guests in VirtualBox.
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flabbergasted
Posts: 9
Joined: 28. Apr 2009, 06:15
Primary OS: Ubuntu 8.10
VBox Version: OSE Debian
Guest OSses: windows vista 64-bit

Windows 10 Guest keeps filling disk

Post by flabbergasted »

I am running Windows 10 guest in Virtualbox 6.1.16_Ubuntu r140961 on a Linux host. I have been using the same .vdi for years. I was originally running Windows 7 and upgraded it to Windows 10. I built it giving it 80 Gb of hard disk space. I later increased that to 120 Gigs and that filled up fairly quickly. I recently increased it to 220 Gigs just a few days ago and there are only 5 gigs free at this point. When I first increase it, the Windows 10 guest ran fairly quickly. Now it is back to a crawl.

I only use the Windows Guest machine for my work, because the software I use for work in only written for Windows. I do insurance adjusting and all of the photos and documents are stored on my public directory under my home directory, so none of the files I save are stored on the Windows guest machine. When I look at the disks in the disk usage analyzer, it shows the vdi for the subject guest under Virtualbox VMs as being almost completely full. When I look at the property of the C: drive in the Windows guest, it show that there are only a little over 5 Gigs of space free. But as I said, I just added 80 Gigs of space to this drive a few days ago, but after restarting, it is now full. I am running the vdi in dynamic mode.

For any other info that may help, let me know and I will provide it. I do appreciate any help in resolving this.
Vdi full in disk analyzer.
Vdi full in disk analyzer.
VDI.jpg (63.14 KiB) Viewed 6847 times
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DiskUsage.png
DiskUsage.png (16.03 KiB) Viewed 6847 times
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39156
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: Windows 10 Guest keeps filling disk

Post by mpack »

If VirtualBox is allocating blocks to the VDI, then some process inside the guest is writing to those blocks.

VirtualBox has no control over what processes you run inside the VM: no VirtualBox feature is filling your guest drives.

As to "I added 80GB", have a read of: How to resize a Virtual Drive. Note step 2 plus the advice about snapshots.

Finally, please note that "6.1.16_Ubuntu" refers to a third party build from the open sources, not an actual VirtualBox release, and technically not supported here.
flabbergasted
Posts: 9
Joined: 28. Apr 2009, 06:15
Primary OS: Ubuntu 8.10
VBox Version: OSE Debian
Guest OSses: windows vista 64-bit

Re: Windows 10 Guest keeps filling disk

Post by flabbergasted »

Your comment that this had to be occurring inside the guest machine got me looking for what could be that big. It turns out that there was a backup file and a backup folder under users. The backup folder contained 99 gigs from a backup on the 28th a few days ago. This explains why it just recently started to drag. These two alone were 143 gigs. I deleted them. So there is now 143 Gigs of free space on Windows C:. But when I bring up the disk analyzer on the Linux host, it still shows the vdi virtually full, (no pun intended.)

So my question is, is the disk analyzer making it look like the vdi is virtually full, because that space is reserved even though it is setup for dynamic or is there something else I have to do to reduce something within virtual box to rectify the appearance of the vdi being full?
BillG
Volunteer
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Joined: 19. Sep 2009, 04:44
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
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Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Windows 10 Guest keeps filling disk

Post by BillG »

The first thing I would do is compact the .vdi file.

If you have never done that, search compact .vdi file linux host . There are lots of hits - take your pick.

I run a Windows host so I use mpack's CloneVDI tool.
Bill
mpack
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Posts: 39156
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
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Re: Windows 10 Guest keeps filling disk

Post by mpack »

flabbergasted wrote:But when I bring up the disk analyzer on the Linux host, it still shows the vdi virtually full, (no pun intended.)
Deleting a file is just a notation in a disk index. It does not unwrite the disk sectors. If you want to discard currently unused filesystem sectors then you need compact the disk using a host tool.

My CloneVDI is the most convenient way of compacting. It will run under Wine on Linux hosts.
flabbergasted
Posts: 9
Joined: 28. Apr 2009, 06:15
Primary OS: Ubuntu 8.10
VBox Version: OSE Debian
Guest OSses: windows vista 64-bit

Re: Windows 10 Guest keeps filling disk

Post by flabbergasted »

Hi mpack, Thanks for the reply. I know it has been a long time. I have not been having an issue for a while, but the CloneVDI tool requiring the use of Wine seems not a good solution if the only reason to install wine is to use a tool that will only be used once to compact a vdi considering VirtualBox pretty much eliminated the need for Wine, at least the kind of wine we are talking about here. It has not eliminated a need for the kind of wine I am about to go pour into a glass. :D
scottgus1
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Joined: 30. Dec 2009, 20:14
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
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Re: Windows 10 Guest keeps filling disk

Post by scottgus1 »

flabbergasted wrote:seems not a good solution if the only reason to install wine is to use a tool that will only be used once to compact a vdi
Faced with a certain job, one might find hat a certain tool setup is required, and one has to decide to get that tool or not.

And you might want to compact the vdi again one day...

VirtualBox's 'vboxmanage modifymedium' command contains a 'compact' function. See the manual, https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch08. ... difymedium

Take a backup of the vdi file before vboxmanage compacting.
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39156
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
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Re: Windows 10 Guest keeps filling disk

Post by mpack »

scottgus1 wrote: VirtualBox's 'vboxmanage modifymedium' command contains a 'compact' function. See the manual, https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch08. ... difymedium
To avoid further frustration, be warned that the VBoxManage compact function simply eliminates 1MB blocks from the VDI that are filled with zeros, meaning it will do very little unless you have run a third party tool to zero unused areas of the disk first (e.g. sdelete for Windows, zerofree for Linux). Also the VBoxManage feature only works with VDI, and the whole process will take a lot longer than CloneVDI because the latter doesn't require third party help to identify unused portions of a supported guest filesystem.

I do actually know a bit more about Linux development than I did in the past, I probably could do a native Linux version now. But whatever I did you'd probably still need to download a GUI framework since Linux has no native one. IMO Wine is one of the least intrusive options I could choose.
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