Shrink Hyper-V Virtual Disk

Modified on Thu, 16 Jul at 6:42 AM

If there is empty space inside the disk, and the virtual disk is much bigger, you can shrink the virtual disk (vhdx).

Run this command within the virtual machine to zero out the empty blocks (takes 1-2 minutes for a 300GB drive):

Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter C -ReTrim -SlabConsolidate -Verbose

Then shutdown the virtual machine and run this command on the Hyper-V host (takes 5-10 minutes for a 300GB drive):

Optimize-VHD -Path "D:\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks\VirtualDisk.vhdx" -Mode Full -Verbose