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Changing the HD size of a VPC image

Source: microsoft.public.virtualpc
Sent: 01/03/2006
From: (email address - cut out)
Message:

Running VPC 2004 SP1, as we all know, the Hard Disk image will grow as
needed. The problem now is I want to get rid of blank space.

During a Win95 setup I had to copy the Win95 disk to the C drive. I've
deleted most of this and my actual HD usage is around 120megs but my
image is around 720megs.

How can I get VPC to shrink the image down to a more reasonably size as
I want to backup these images to keep clean archive copies?

Note: using my local PC's NTFS file compression is out of the question!

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Related Messages

Re: Changing the HD size of a VPC image

Sent: 01/03/2006
From: "TravisOwens" <(email address - cut out)>
Message:

I did some homework and found the answer and wrote a tutorial which can
be found at:
http://thespoke.net/blogs/travisowens/archive/2006/01/03/How_to_shrink_Virtual_PC_hard_disks.aspx
----------------
While Virtual PC can resize a hard disk image larger as needed, it
won't shrink it back down if large files are deleted. Because of this
your hard disk image can easily grow out of control. After looking
through some Microsoft documentation and web chats I found out how to
shrink files in VPC2004 (I use SP1, which might be required).

This is NOT an issue with swap files and such, here's the official way
to shrink a VPC size...

Step 1: flush your temp files, found in:
C:\Windows\Temp\
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Temp\
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Temporary
Internet Files\

Step 2: Boot up the OS, run defrag on the HD and make sure you enable
the setting to "put everything at the beginning of the drive"

Step 3: In your VPC session menu choose "CD" > "Capture ISO Image" and
choose "Virtual Disk Precompactor.iso" which you can find in
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual PC\Virtual Machine Additions\"

Step 4: You should have a new drive available, if not, reboot your OS
session

Step 5: Once you double click the ISO mounted as a drive, it will
prompt you to compact your HD image. At this point it will only
"prepare" the image for compacting.

This can take awhile, from 5mins to much longer!!!

Step 6: Shutdown your OS

Step 7: In VPC choose "Settings" for your image in question, and go to
the "Hard Disk 1" section and on the right side you can use the
"Virtual Hard Disk Wizard" button.

Step 8: Choose to edit an image and find your target image and choose
to "Compact" it.

This can take awhile too!

Step 9: Done!

It took me over 5mins to compress a 720meg Win98 image that only
contained 120megs of actual data.

If you scroll to the bottom of my first source you can reade of some
extra tricks to shrink the drive even further but I found this easy
method to be very effective and give back the majority of the wasted
space.

Sources:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=%2Fservicedesks%2Fwebcasts%2Fen%2Ftranscripts%2Fwct032304.asp
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q833138

Re: Changing the HD size of a VPC image

Sent: 01/03/2006
From: "Colin Barnhorst" <colinbarharst(remove)@msn.com>
Message:

Defrag the guest vhd (from within the guest).
Run the Precompactor (capture the .iso with the virtual cd drive and it will
autoplay inside the guest).
Edit the .vhd with the Virtual Disk Wizard (from the host).

<(email address - cut out)> wrote in message
news:(email address - cut out)...

Show quoted text

> Running VPC 2004 SP1, as we all know, the Hard Disk image will grow as
> needed. The problem now is I want to get rid of blank space.
>
> During a Win95 setup I had to copy the Win95 disk to the C drive. I've
> deleted most of this and my actual HD usage is around 120megs but my
> image is around 720megs.
>
> How can I get VPC to shrink the image down to a more reasonably size as
> I want to backup these images to keep clean archive copies?
>
> Note: using my local PC's NTFS file compression is out of the question!
>

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