Virtual Machine Disk Optimization

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

Parameters

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 drives and reduces the space they occupy on your host machine. 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.