Virtual machine disk optimization

prl_disk_tool is a standalone utility (included with Parallels Desktop) used to optimize Parallels virtual machine disks.

Syntax

prl_disk_tool compact [--buildmap] -hdd <disk_name> [--force] [-comm <memory_name>]

prl_disk_tool compact i,info --hdd <disk_name> [comm <memory_name>]

The prl_disk_tool compact command removes all empty blocks from expanding Parallels virtual disks and reduces their size on your real disk. Compacting is performed by scanning file systems for unused clusters and cleaning the corresponding disk blocks. The supported file systems are NTFS, FAT16/32, ext2/ext3. You can also try to compact disks with unsupported file system types using the --buildmap option.