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I have an Ubuntu 15.04 guest OS running in VMware Player running in a Windows 8.1 host OS. Of late I used VMware Player's "Suspend" feature to resume my work later on, however every time I try to restore the suspended state, I get a graphics incompatibility issue because of which the suspended state could not be restored back.

Meanwhile I found that the Ubuntu guest OS takes too much time to boot (I'm not sure if VMware Player takes too much time to load the OS or if it is a problem with the booting) and that multiple .vmdk files have been created as follows:

enter image description here

Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s010.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s011.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s012.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s013.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s014.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s015.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s016.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s017.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s018.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s019.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s020.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s021.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s022.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s023.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s024.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s026.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s001.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s002.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s003.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s004.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s005.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s006.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s007.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s008.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s009.vmdk

along with other VMware files:

vmware-0.log
vmware-1.log
vprintproxy.log
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-s025.vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit).nvram
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit).vmdk
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit).vmsd
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit).vmx
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit).vmxf
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-8843f757.vmem
Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit)-8843f757.vmss
vmware.log

All the vmdk files whenever I boot into the OS and the removal of any one vmdk file results in the following error:

Error while powering on: Unable to open file "G:\Ubuntu_15.04-64bit\64bit\Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid (64bit).vmdk":
The system cannot find the file specified.

The entire folder occupies a size of upto 30GB and each of these files occupies a disk space of around 1 GB.


For what reason are these multiple vmdk files created?
What does the "s0xx" suffix in the vmdk files correspond to?
Is there a way to reduce the size of the system by removing the unnecessary vmdk files? The size of the working directory (G:\Ubuntu_15.04-64bit\64bit) keeps growing.

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4
  • When you create a virtual disc you are given the choice of fixed size or segmented. The latter is more flexible but has a performance penalty. The segment size is limited to 2GB (which you have). You can convert to a fixed size disc using theses instructions. For more detail, you can reverse these instructions.
    – AFH
    Commented Apr 8, 2017 at 14:13
  • If you can't do these, then you create a new VM with fixed disc size, and boot Ubuntu Live in each to mirror the segmented disc to external storage (which may be in the host file system) and use this to overwrite the new fixed size disc. Note the importance of fully shutting down the VM before you start.
    – AFH
    Commented Apr 8, 2017 at 14:18
  • Thank you so much for your immediate response. I shall try them out. But will the above methods also decrease the size occupied by the entire system as such? If not, please suggest methods to do the same. And also, I could not follow the second comment. Please elaborate.
    – thegreatcoder
    Commented Apr 12, 2017 at 18:42
  • You can set any disc size you want on creating a VM. You cannot reliably copy a partition while it is active, as it can change while the copy is in progress. There are techniques to stop changes for the duration of a copy, but the integrity of the data can't be guaranteed, as open files may have uncommitted buffers when the partition is frozen. So the safest procedure is to shut down, to close all files, then use an independent OS (such as a Live CD) to perform the copy. You need to do this, first to back up the segmented disc in one VM, and again to overwrite the system disc in the other VM.
    – AFH
    Commented Apr 12, 2017 at 21:30

1 Answer 1

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As you can see from the following link someone at Ask Ubuntu has the same problem with VMware: Should a bare bones Ubuntu install through VMware Fusion take up this much space? so maybe this is a VMware issue, not an Ubuntu issue. Most open source projects that include a virtual machine application bundled with the software use VirtualBox. I have three Ubuntu guest OSs installed in my VirtualBox, and none of them take up excessive disk space.

VirtualBox never creates any snapshots on its own. Snapshots can only be created in VirtualBox by the user. Select the guest OS in VirtualBox and in the VirtualBox main menu bar select Machine Tools → Snapshots → click Current State in the center pane → Take to save a snapshot of the currently running guest OS. You can also delete older snapshots from the guest OS to free up disk space or to restore the guest OS back to the condition it was in when it was originally installed.

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