Reduce Virtual PC VHD Disk Size

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Reduce Size of VHD Files in Virtual PC

Subjects > Computers > Software > Microsoft Virtual PC

Otto: Is there any utility available that would allow us to shrink the .vhd files? The built-in compact utility doesn't seem to produce enough compact results essentially for us.

Kurt: There are some additional steps required. The Virtual Disk Wizard compact option doesn't compact on its own. It needs a couple of additional factors. The first is within the virtual machine the defragmentation tool needs to be run, and the virtual hard disk needs to be defragmented from within the VM. The second step is to run a utility that will zero the hard drive. There are several third-party utilities that will do this. Eraser is the one I've used quite a bit. That's downloadable; I believe it's a 30-day trial software.

If the Eraser utility is used to zero out the outlying space on the drive in a 3-byte pattern of zeros, then after the virtual machine is defragmented, erased, and then shut down, the Virtual Disk Wizard can be used to compact the disk. If any of those steps are left out, in my testing at least, in other words, if I forget the defragmenter of forget to use the Eraser utility, and then I go into the compact, I end up with one of two things: either, number one, the disk is the same size as when I started out or the disk is slightly larger than when I started out. So, all three of those steps are critical.

Now there is one additional way to compact disks. This is not something that we've documented because, again, it entails using a third-party utility, but if you actually image the drive using Ghost or PowerQuest?Create or some other similar utility from one virtual disk to another virtual disk, the second virtual disk, the one you image to is going to be compacted. That will be as compacted as it can get.

From http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=%2Fservicedesks%2Fwebcasts%2Fen%2Ftranscripts%2Fwct032304.asp

See also:

• http://www.dbazine.com/sql/sql-articles/cook14

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