You can reclaim this space either manually or automatically when Windows shuts down. Over time, this space can grow to consume a lot of space in the VM, as you can see in Figure 6. Sometimes Windows needs some extra temporary space for updates or app installs. Now let’s detail some tips that are specifically useful to the Parallels Desktop user. Up until now, this blog post has discussed file management tools and tips that are useful to any Mac user. Figure 5_Output of the Find Any File utility Special file management tips for the Parallels Desktop user
(See Figure 5.) Note that Find Any File will look inside the VM package, so make sure that any actions you take are on the full VM, not just on files inside the package.
You can also use it to find the really large files that you might want to archive or delete.
Find Any File – a free utility on the Mac App Storeįind Any File is a full-feature file management utility on the Mac App Store.
(See Figure 4.)) Figure 4_Use the Parallels Desktop preferences window to install Parallels Toolbox ( You didn’t know that Parallels Toolbox is bundled with Parallels Desktop? Just go to Preferences window of Parallels Desktop, and click on the Parallels Toolbox icon in that window’s title bar. (See Figure 3.) Figure 3_The output of the Show Large Files link in the Clean Drive tool. This produces a list of the really big files that you might want to delete. (See Figure 2.) Figure 2_The Clean Drive tool in Parallels Toolbox for Macīut also note the highlighted link in that figure, “Show Large Files …”. The Clean Drive tool, one of the more than 40 tools in Parallels Toolbox, is tailor-made to help you manage free space on the Mac Hard Drive, especially in the area of files that you really don’t need, like log or cache files, or the temp files created by some Mac apps. The Clean Drive tool in Parallels Toolbox Note that while the storage used by Parallels Desktop VMs is specifically listed, this is only for VMs stored in your User directory. Parallels VMs stored in the Shared directory or other locations will not be included. On Catalina, Mojave, and Big Sur, you click on the Apple () menu > About This Mac > Storage pane. To quickly view the state of the storage on your Mac, use the two info dialogs in Figure 1. ) You need a utility to assist you in finding the largest files so that you can decide which ones you really still need. (You can spend hours deleting unneeded emails, and while this is useful for a number of reasons, it doesn’t usually result in large amounts of space being freed up. To maximize the amount of free space you have, you will need to get rid of large, unneeded files first. So, utilities to manage your hard drives are quite useful to me, and in this blog post I will describe the ones I use – the first of which all Parallels Desktop users already have, and the other utilities you can get for free.įor me, the most important aspect to file management is free space, and this means getting rid of files you no longer need.
(By “hard drives” I mean any place that you can store files: the main storage on your Mac, whether it is a rotating disk or SSD, the cloud (like Dropbox or OneDrive), an external drive, a DVD or CD, or even a USB thumb drive.) I follow the advice given to me many years ago: “If you don’t have three copies of a digital file – each on a separate drive – then you don’t really care about losing it.” Great advice that has saved me many times, but I do tend to fill up hard drives pretty often.
One of my many character flaws is that I am a bit of a digital hoarder.