Re: How to reduce/shrink the size of a VirtualPC disk image (reclaim unused space)

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From: Unseelie (unseelie_at_gmail.com)
Date: 10/08/04 

Date: 8 Oct 2004 15:06:03 -0700

That first link should work, although you will need, temporarily,
twice the amount of free drive space as the current size of the VPC
image.

user@domain.invalid wrote in message news:<uHlf8YTrEHA.1036@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl>...
> Hello,
>
> I am confronted with a ballooning VirtualPC (6.0) disk image (16GB from
> within Windows, OS X sees a 20GB file) although I have less than 4GB of
> data on my C-drive in W2k. As far as I understand it, this is due to
> files deleted in Windows still taking up space on the harddrive. I
> probably aggravated the problem by converting my image to a fixed-sized
> one (and converting it back to a dynamic one).
>
> The solution I found on the net (e.g.
> http://www.robertmoir.co.uk/win/vpcfaq/VPCFAQ5-GeneralTipsandTri.html#5.11
> ) is to zero the unused disk space in Windows (after defragmentation),
> using software referenced in the previous link, shut down Windows,
> commit the changes, and then using the the Virtual Disk Assistant (under
> the 'Window' menu) in VPC to select the image and use the function
> 'Reclaim unused disk space' to shrink the disk image (which is only
> present when you have a dynamic image).
>
> Alas, in my case, doing all these steps, does not change the size of my
> disk image. Other solutions suggested were to use 'Ghost' to 'clone' to
> a newly created, smaller disk image or use 'Partition Magic' to shrink
> the size of the C-drive. But how this would be done in practice, was
> left unclear.
>
> Any help would be very much appreciated.
>
> Manu

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