Hello,
I have a virtual machine with a single-file, not pre-allocated HDD with 20GB as maximum size. The guest is Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS. I use Workstation 10.0.2.
My issue is with the filesize of the VMDK file. The guest reports that it's using around 2.7GB of space (I tested this with df -h and ncdu). However, the VMDK is almost 7.5GB large, which for me is quite a big difference.
The idea is that I sync this VM as a development environment between computers and the actual files are on the host, shared with the guest via shared folders. However, the point of keeping a small installation is defeated if the VMDK becomes almost triple in size.
I already cleaned up the Ubuntu filesystem, zeroed the free space using zerofree, defragmented and then compacted the VM from Workstation. This brought it from ~11GB to the current 7.5GB, but this is still very large and I can't figure out why it's taking so much space. Another thing, I don't use any snapshots.
Can anyone help me at least figure out why is it so big?