Recently, my Mac host experienced disk capacity issues, and the VMs running through Fusion promptly to safely shutdown as a self-protection measure. Unfortunately, when disk space was recovered manually and the Windows VM was restarted, it was unrecognisable. I booted into Safe Mode, flagged the disk to perform a chkdsk on reboot, and thankfully the VM was then able to boot itself up.
However, I now see 2 entries for this VM host in my VM Library:
1) One starts fine and operates as expected, right-click=> "show in Finder" displays the files under my manually created directory for my VM files, and points to a .vmx file. This folder also contains .vmdk, .nvram, .plist, .vmds and other files I'd expect to see.
2) The other does not start at all. The message is given: "The parent virtual disk has been modified since the child was created". right-click=> "show in Finder" displays a single vmwarevm file. When I perform an "ls -al" of this file/folder from terminal, it displays a number of files including .plist, .vmdk, .vmx and .vmx.lck files that seem to get updated by the other running VM mentioned above.
Through the running VM I can see I have no running snapshots. I would like to reclaim as much space and clean up the VMWare library as much as possible, however am hoping someone can help me understand:
i) why there exists these 2 folders and files that seem to be referenced by a dead VM.
ii) which files can be safely deleted to reclaim disk space and the VM library.
I have pasted the 2 folders directory listings below:
$ ls -ln ~/Documents/Virtual\ Machines.localized/Hackbox5.vmwarevm/
total 18956432
drwxr-xr-x 67 501 20 2278 6 Nov 16:08 Applications
-rw------- 1 501 20 2639921152 3 Dec 12:15 Hackbox5-000001.vmdk
-rw------- 1 501 20 3456106496 28 Nov 11:27 Hackbox5-Snapshot1.vmem
-rw------- 1 501 20 69043054 28 Nov 11:27 Hackbox5-Snapshot1.vmsn
-rw------- 1 501 20 3456106496 29 Nov 17:17 Hackbox5-cc1f75a8.vmem
drwxrwxrwx 3 501 20 102 25 Nov 09:25 Hackbox5-cc1f75a8.vmem.lck
-rw------- 1 501 20 68531734 25 Nov 09:25 Hackbox5-cc1f75a8.vmss
-rw------- 1 501 20 8684 29 Nov 17:40 Hackbox5.nvram
-rw-r--r-- 1 501 20 3168580 3 Dec 12:15 Hackbox5.plist
-rw-r--r-- 1 501 20 450 28 Nov 11:25 Hackbox5.vmsd
-rwxr-xr-x 1 501 20 4944 3 Dec 11:47 Hackbox5.vmx
drwxrwxrwx 3 501 20 102 3 Dec 12:15 Hackbox5.vmx.lck
-rw-r--r-- 1 501 20 3037 28 Nov 11:33 Hackbox5.vmxf
drwxr-xr-x 7 501 20 238 18 Dec 2012 appListCache
-rw-r--r-- 1 501 20 854196 11 Jul 15:09 quicklook-cache.png
drwxr-xr-x 3 501 20 102 25 Nov 09:25 screenshotsCache
-rw------- 1 501 20 6072750 29 Nov 16:39 vmmcores-2.gz
-rw------- 1 501 20 5428609 29 Nov 23:12 vmmcores-3.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 501 20 102892 3 Dec 09:48 vmware-0.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 501 20 102892 3 Dec 09:38 vmware-1.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 501 20 102891 2 Dec 13:59 vmware-2.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 501 20 95540 3 Dec 11:47 vmware.log
$ ls -ln VMs/Hackbox5/
total 60656728
-rw------- 1 501 20 1073741824 3 Dec 11:50 564dd488-816b-4567-b484-5afbb3174c83.vmem
drwxrwxrwx 3 501 20 102 3 Dec 11:50 564dd488-816b-4567-b484-5afbb3174c83.vmem.lck
drwxr-xr-x 65 501 20 2210 2 Dec 10:26 Applications
-rw-r--r-- 1 501 20 8684 3 Dec 11:50 Hackbox5.nvram
-rw-r--r-- 1 501 20 2954401 3 Dec 11:50 Hackbox5.plist
-rw-rw-rw- 1 501 20 29978263552 3 Dec 12:28 Hackbox5.vmdk
drwxrwxrwx 3 501 20 102 3 Dec 11:50 Hackbox5.vmdk.lck
-rw-r--r-- 1 501 20 0 5 Jan 2012 Hackbox5.vmsd
-rw-r--r-- 1 501 20 3175 3 Dec 11:52 Hackbox5.vmx
drwxrwxrwx 3 501 20 102 3 Dec 09:54 Hackbox5.vmx.lck
-rw-r--r-- 1 501 20 3037 3 Dec 10:33 Hackbox5.vmxf
drwxr-xr-x 7 501 20 238 2 Dec 10:26 appListCache
drwxr-xr-x 3 501 20 102 18 Dec 2012 caches
drwxr-xr-x 3 501 20 102 3 Dec 09:54 screenshotsCache
-rw-r--r-- 1 501 20 258814 3 Dec 11:38 vmware-0.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 501 20 359406 3 Dec 11:28 vmware-1.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 501 20 397044 3 Dec 09:50 vmware-2.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 501 20 240155 3 Dec 11:54 vmware.log