How I clean out old Docker data.

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Cleaning up Docker

I’ve been recreating Docker images a lot for work. This seems to slowly balloon the Docker disk image, so I’ve had to work out how to clean everything out.

… since I obviously don’t deploy on my workstation there’s nothing that needs to be kept …

This might not work with Hyper-V Docker on Windows; I don’t have access to Hyper-V flavour.

• stop/remove all docker containers
  • docker stop $(docker ps -aq)
  • docker rm -f $(docker ps -aq)
  • if you don’t have “bash stuff” you can run docker ps -aq and then copy/paste the ids for docker stop / docker rm -f
  • … i don’t have bash stuff …
• run the prune thing
  • docker system prune -a --volumes
• defragment the virtual disk (this is probably the important part)
  • open power shell as admin
  • wsl --shutdown
    • docker dekstop will pop up an error message (ignore it until you’re done)
  • open diskpart with the diskpart command
  • run the following steps
    • … adjust the file command to match where youh .vhdx is - it should be big
    • select vdisk file="C:\Users\peter\AppData\Local\Docker\wsl\disk\docker_data.vhdx"
    • attach vdisk readonly
    • compact vdisk
    • detach vdisk
    • exit
• if there’s still a shortage of disk space … idk …
  • Diskitude (or whatever) visualises disk usage https://madebyevan.com/diskitude/
  • … so i’ve been using that to locate large things i don’t need
• when done, restarting Docker Desktop (or clicking the “Restart” button on that error message) gets everything rolling again