Re: Precompactor + Virtual Disk Assistant haven't reduced the size of the virtual machine


Paul Power wrote:
Petula wrote:
Paul,

Thank you.
How is the 8.87 GB that's being used up on the Mac side (by the virtual
machine in the "Virtual PC List" folder) consistent with:

"......... the actual 'used' space in your virtual machine is about 3.75GB."
?

Petula


"Paul Power" <paulkpower@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1152725357.545309.284160@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Petula wrote:
Here are the sizes of items in Windows:

WINNT 1.79 GB
Program Files 855 MB
My Shared Folder 250 MB
Documents and Settings 848 MB
All the rest 5 MB max

and yet

Windows 2000[C] 15.9 GB Total Size; 12.0 GB Free Space

I remember when I compacted the disk before its size went down to about
4
GB; and I really haven't added anything significant since - in fact I
cleaned out a lot of unused items.




"Steve Jain" <noreply.-@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:vbg8b2dgnh6vb9852d08k1j1r6frdlqt0l@xxxxxxxxxx
Converting to a fixed disk does not change the size of your VHD, once
created, the virtual hard disk is always the same maximum size, so
converting it to fixed will increase it to it's maximum size.

How much space is Windows itself claiming to be using? If it says
it's using 8GB, you can't compact the disk image anymore

On Tue, 11 Jul 2006 15:04:09 -0700, "Petula" <bonespur@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Configuration:
Win2000 in VPC6 in an iMac.
_________________________________________________

I followed Steve Jain's modified procedure (see ***, below) as
closely as
I
could in order to reduce the size of a virtual machine after
defragging.
Nevertheless, the size of the virtual machine remained the same at
8.7
GB.
Worse still, after I used the "compacted" virtual machine, the size
grew
to
16 GB.

Below, I summarize what happened step by step (as Steve's procedure
differs
a little from what happens in my system configuration):

1. As a backup, copy the virtual machine as found in the "Virtual PC
List"
folder.
2. Download precompactor.zip from Steve Jain's website
(www.essjae.com)
and
extract it in the guest OS.
3. Defragment the guest OS hard drive.
4. Run precompactor in the guest OS.
5. Exit precompactor and shutdown the guest PC.
6. At this point the size of my virtual machine (in the Virtual PC
List"
folder) is 8.71 GB - i.e. it is way too big.
7. Use Virtual Disk Assistant on the Mac to reclaim lost space. Start
VDA
8. Follow on screen steps
9. Select "Examine or modify existing disk image" and click right
arrow
10. Select "Select a hard drive image attached to a PC" and click
right
arrow
I have only one disk image - so there are no options in this step
11. Select "Reclaim zeroed drive space
Now the file characteristics are shown:
- File Type: Virtual PC Hard Disk Image
- Disk Type: Dynamically Expanding
- Format Type: FAT32
- Disk Capacity: 16.0 GB
12. Click right arrow to start the process.
When finished, click Close.

Because the above procedure did not shrink the size of the virtual
machine,
I started all over again, and this time in step #7 I selected
"Convert to
fixed size drive".
However, the VDA did not ask me what size I wanted the new drive to
be,
and
the end result was the same as before, i.e. the size of the resulting
compacted virtual machine was 8.7 GB.

___________________________________________________
*** Here is Steve Jain's modified procedure:

"This is my original procedure modified for precompactor.exe

1. Backup any critical data in the guest OS.
2. Download precompactor.zip from my website and extract it the guest
OS. Alternative disk 'zeroing' software can also be used.
3. Defragment the guest OS hard drive.
4. Run precompactor in the guest OS.

steps 5-20 were detailed steps for configuring Eraser correctly

21. Exit precompactor and shutdown the guest PC.
22. Use Virtual Disk Assistant on the Mac to reclaim lost space.
Start
VDA
23. Follow on screen steps
24. Select Examine or modify existing disk and click Next.
25. Click Browse to locate the disk image, double-click the image
file
and click Next to continue.
26. Select Compact the Disk image and click Next.
27. Virtual PC allows the use of a secondary file to compact the
disk.
It's a good idea to have the image file be compacted to a new file
and
then verified to prevent data loss or corruption of the original
image
file. Select New File, browse or enter a new location, click Next to
continue.
28. Click Finish to start the process.
When finished, click Close."


--
Cheers,
Steve Jain, Virtual Machine MVP
http://vpc.essjae.com/
I do not work for Microsoft.


Petula,

From your figures, the actual 'used' space in your virtual machine is
about 3.75GB
The 15.9GB figure is the maximum capacity of the virtual machine. It
will grow dynamically until it reaches 15.9GB and then it will stop
responding (actually, it will start acting up around 14GB).

So, bottom line is: the virtual machine is the proper size and is not
actually using 15.9GB of space........there is no need to compact it at
this time.


When you check the size of the virtual machine in the Virtual PC List
folder, is Windows shut down or in a saved state? If you did not shut
Windows down, the Mac side will report a different size than Windows
will (Windows does not know what a 'saved state' is).


I just checked my Windows size. Windows is reporting the size as
4.18GB. The Mac OS is reporting the size as 6.2GB. I assume that there
is some overhead with the 'packaging' that makes up the entire virtual
machine. I also know that there is some space that has not been
reclaimed. Now, I ran Precompactor on this VM just after Xmas and it
reduced from 6GB down to 3+GB. So, depending on what you use VPC for,
it can take quite a while to grow (I use it every day for 6-8 hrs per
day running a database)

.

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