1.2 KiB
1.2 KiB
Dealing with massive Docker virtual disks
Scope
Situation: you are running out of disk space in your laptop. There are very high chances this is caused by how WSL and Docker manage disk space.
To check if this is truly the issue, take the following steps:
- Install WinDirStat if you don’t have it: https://windirstat.net/
- Start it up and run a scan. It will show you which folders and files are soaking up disk space in your machine.
- If you see something along the lines of this screenshot (a single
ext4.vhdxfile eating up double or triple digit Gbs, hiding in some Docker/WSL folder), then it’s probably WSL and Docker that are at fault, and this guide is applicable to you. If not, sorry but you’ll have to look elsewhere. Note that WinDirStat can still be useful to spot where you are losing all your space.
How to fix
- Follow the instructions here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/70946140/docker-desktop-wsl-ext4-vhdx-too-large
- If the original page died, here you can find a Wayback Machine snapshot of it: http://web.archive.org/web/20241009132152/https://stackoverflow.com/questions/70946140/docker-desktop-wsl-ext4-vhdx-too-large