How to Recover Virtual Hard Disk(VHD) Space Created by VirtualBox on Windows 8/8.1 Computer

I love to have multiple operating systems on my computer rather than hanging out with only one. Why don’t people like two different operating systems on your computer? Don’t you?

What we do generally is install a main operating system on our computers first and install the second one ‘virtually’. There are several virtual environment creators available on the internet and VirtualBox is one of the top preferred virtualization software.

I have tried to install Ubuntu 14.0 on the VirtualBox for the first time and it is a havoc.

I didn’t noticed that my laptop’s battery was dying when I was installing the Ubuntu version through VirtualBox. It took toll on my hard disk. The virtual machine is created after all and I couldn’t boot into Ubuntu.

What else could I do rather than just deleting the wrongly created VM?

I’ve deleted the VM from the VirtualBox normally and for my surprise the virtually allocated has drive space has not recovered. Though it is just 5GB, I can’t afford to loose it. Would you?

I have done a little exploration on the issue on the internet and found a smart solution to recover it back.

Recovering the VHD space

Recovering the Virtual Hard Disk(VHD) space is quite easy as  drinking water.

While creating the VHD, VirtualBox usually takes the space under your username on the same disk where the main operating system is installed.

For e.g., C:\Users\WINDOWSUSERNAME\VirtualBox VMs

Note: To go the VHD allocated location on your Windows computer, simply copy-paste the above location and change WINDOWSUSERNAME with your username.

Navigating to the above path will take you to the location where the VHD space is allocated for your Virtual Machines(VMs). Select the virtual machine you wanted to de-allocate and delete.

Now check your hard disk space in My Computer and say HURRAY!!

Wait a sec pal! Don’t forget to share the happiness in comments below. By the way, you are welcome :)