How do I reclaim space previously used by a virtual machine based on a Boot Camp partition?

157 users found this article helpful


You can import a Boot Camp partition into a new virtual machine based on a virtual hard drive. This will allow you to better manage your hard disk space, as well as give you the ability to use Snapshots and back up the data in Boot Camp.

After importing your Boot Camp partition all the data from your original VM will be present in the imported VM called "Imported VMNAME", where VMNAME is the name of your original VM.

You may then free the disk space occupied by the original VM and Boot Camp partition itself by deleting them.


Removing your Boot Camp Windows partition is a one-way operation and cannot be undone. Therefore, before you continue we strongly recommend that you check how your new imported VM operates. Try to start it and perform the kinds of operations that you need Windows for. Postpone removing your Boot Camp partitionuntil you are completely sure you will not need to boot into Windows using Boot Camp any more.

NOTE: It is important to do the actions below exactly in the same order as presented. First - remove the Boot Camp partition, second - remove the old VM.

How to reclaim free space

  1. Remove Boot Camp Windows partition using the instructions presented in the following article.
  2. Remove Parallels VМ based on Boot Camp partition same way as you would remove any other Parallels VM. Use the instructions presented in article #5029.

Warning:Do not confuse your old VM with the new one. Remember that the new VM's name will start with "Imported ". If you delete the new VM at this step, you will lose all of your data! You only want to remove the old one.

NOTE: If you are using Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac, please refer to this article for more information.

Was this article helpful?

Tell us how we can improve it.