virtualbox.org

Hi and welcome to the new year. I was playing around with virtual box for the first time and I created an XP and a Win 7 vm allocating them 15GB HD and 25 GB space. I went to delete them to get back mentioned HD space but I foolishly picked the wrong setting to do this. Now all ties to both machines have been wiped, I was in the folder with the XP VDL file that was the size of the space of the XP HD when I chose the wipe delete machine, I saw it disappear but alas the space has not been added back to my hard drive. After researching I believe the right action to have taken would be to of downloaded a Precompactor software and used it to reallocate the space. Now I can not find the partitions in question to shrink them back. The question I pose to you today as I cannot seem to find a valid fix is:

TL:DR

Is there a way to relocate HD space back to my host machine after I have already wiped all files from the virtual box

A VM just uses files like any other host application. If the VM has already been unregistered but you neglected to physically delete the files then all you need do is go find the VM folder and delete it. Section 10.1 of the user manual tells you where VirtualBox stores its files. On an OS X host VM files are apparantly stored in in /users/<username>/VirtualBox VMs/<VM name>.

OS X hosts also seem to have a healthy community of people who enable the automatic "Time Machine" backup feature but don't know how to use it fully. If Time Machine is storing a backup of your VDI then I'm sure Google (or someone else here) can tell you how to get rid of it.

Hi thanks for the reply, I was in the folder you spoke of when I removed it on the virtual box software. There was the image of the vm and they were the size that I had allocated them so I new they where the right ones. when I removed the vms in virtual box the files and the folders where erased as well. After this I checked my HD space and it had not gone back up.

As for the time machine I have not got it set to backup at all.

StanMarsh wrote:I was in the folder you spoke of when I removed it on the virtual box software.

In what sense were you in that folder? Finder? Terminal? Other app?

StanMarsh wrote:I was playing around with virtual box for the first time and I created an XP and a Win 7 vm allocating them 15GB HD and 25 GB space.

Do you remember if your HDs were dynamic or fixed? The default is dynamic and you'd have to change it on purpose, so I guess you would remember. Also, did you actually install WinXP and/or Win7 on these machines, or you just created them and erased them? These question are important, so please take the time to answer them.

StanMarsh wrote:I believe the right action to have taken would be to of downloaded a Precompactor software

I don't think you quite understand the functionality of the Precompator software, but it doesn't matter in any case, because the Precompactor is for the VHD format, which (again) you would have to specifically change it on purpose. Even if it did shrink your HD images, it wouldn't matter since you deleted them.

socratis wrote:

StanMarsh wrote:I was in the folder you spoke of when I removed it on the virtual box software.

In what sense were you in that folder? Finder? Terminal? Other app?

Finder, was in user - VirtualBox vms -

socratis wrote:

StanMarsh wrote:I was playing around with virtual box for the first time and I created an XP and a Win 7 vm allocating them 15GB HD and 25 GB space.

Do you remember if your HDs were dynamic or fixed? The default is dynamic and you'd have to change it on purpose, so I guess you would remember. Also, did you actually install WinXP and/or Win7 on these machines, or you just created them and erased them? These question are important, so please take the time to answer them.

Dynamic. I Installed both win7/XP into the machines.

socratis wrote:

StanMarsh wrote:I believe the right action to have taken would be to of downloaded a Precompactor software

I don't think you quite understand the functionality of the Precompator software, but it doesn't matter in any case, because the Precompactor is for the VHD format, which (again) you would have to specifically change it on purpose. Even if it did shrink your HD images, it wouldn't matter since you deleted them.

Ah I see, am I right in thinking that normally After erasing the machines then the space is automatically transferred back?

Also I checked in the terminal using " VBoxManage list vms " to see if I could find them if they where in a different location but the response was blank.

StanMarsh wrote:am I right in thinking that normally After erasing the machines then the space is automatically transferred back?

Yes. My suggestion is to look elsewhere for your lost space. If the directories are not there, then the data is gone. I would suggest Disk Inventory X and GrandPerspective to help you figure out where your data is allocated. 40 GB should be easy to spot.

Ah I see, I will check into them. I Believed it was the vms because I checked my space before and after I erased them and the HD space did not raise at all. But I shall do some detective work. thank you for your responses and time. I shall report back If I find the culprit.

StanMarsh wrote:I checked my space before and after I erased them and the HD space did not raise at all.

If you were seeing the free space in the status bar of the Finder, keep in mind that it doesn't always update automatically after a change such as a deletion, especially if the Finder isn't the one responsible for it. One other thing that you should check out is to check for ".vdi" in Spotlight.