Can you shrink a vmdk? Make a vmware hard disk smaller??

Interesting post wondering if it is possible to shrink a vmdk without using converter.




Here we have a 10gb think provisioned vmdk







It has been shrunk in windows to 3gb







Lets shrink the vmdk now
I changed it to 3.5gb







Now clicking ok.
Tasks say reconfiguration complete
Lets go back to it
Still 10gb…









Trying to storage vmotion it over now
Seeing if it will update after the storage vmotion
Nope.











Cannot  shrink the vmdk (easily)
You can use v2v, disk cloning utility to do it but there is no simple method to quickly shrink your vmdk.




**note on vmkfstools
Like A.P. suggests, don’t use the vmkfstools, because while it can shrink your disk, it is risky for production data
"This way to shrink a virtual disk may be an option for a blank disk (although in this case it may be rather recreated), but it's highly risky with a virtual disk which already contains partitions and data."  -a.p.   Pasted from <http://communities.vmware.com/message/2116919#2116919>






**here is a different gotcha:
The actual vmdk is actually 85mb
So even though the used space is much less than then what the provisioned size is, shrinking is a no go.