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7 posts
A safe WSL 2 recovery flow that shuts distributions down, backs up the VHDX, attaches it bare, identifies the Linux device, runs e2fsck, and unmounts.
How to identify the right WSL 2 distribution, quiesce it, expand its virtual disk and ext4 filesystem, verify capacity, and avoid destructive AppData edits.
How WSL ext4.vhdx allocation grows, what sparse mode and discard can reclaim, why deletion is not compaction, and how to back up, change, and verify safely.
When wsl --import-in-place is the right migration tool, how it differs from a tar import, and how to avoid registering your only copy of the disk.
Each WSL2 distro lives inside a dynamically-expanding .vhdx file that grows with use but never shrinks back down automatically after deletions.
Deleting files inside WSL2 does not shrink the Windows-side .vhdx automatically. That is expected dynamic-disk behavior, fixed with diskpart compaction.
A complete diskpart walkthrough for shrinking a WSL2 distro's .vhdx file after deleting large data, since Windows never reclaims that space on its own.