Free up ESXi local drive VMFS datastore space after deleting data in a thin provisioned Windows VM

Works perfectly, thanks.

I cannot reclaim space on my vmdk at all. Windows shows 50GB of 900GB space used. VMDK is 780GB. I cannot shrink it, frustrating, to say the least :-(
SDelete hangs at 0%
This video does not show the SDelete procedure only the vmfstools command

Thanks Paul this video helped me how to run vmkfstool command, we need to be in the folder, i was missing that so ended up getting an error 25 is resolved

Followed this and Ive LOST space!

Beware folks, this video could actually screw up your ESXI. It did mine. I have a drive that is provisioned for 800GB and due to how this program works, it eats up all of the space. Well, this ate and ate and ate to where it crashed my system before it finished the job. So instead of doing maintenance to keep my rig optimal, I just blew it up...

Can i use Sdelete for mounted drives? I have a mounted drive within one of the local drives on a VM

Thanks for the video !

Hi Paul, seeing as you educate me all the time i thought id share a tip with you! you can open a command prompt on a folder in explorer by holding shift then right mouse click the folder you want to open, you will then see the option to open cmd. You can also open a cmd and drag and drop a folder to change the directory. Cheers for the fantastic videos