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Reducing size of VPC disk - reclaiming, fixed size, etc. - please help!

Source: microsoft.public.mac.virtualpc
Sent: 02/16/2006
From: Michael Levin <(email address - cut out)>
Message:

I'm running VPC7 on a G4 laptop. Today I got a message saying my virtual PC
hard drive file has been expanded, and now I have hardly any space on my
real hard drive left. Can someone explain to me how I find out how much
space on my real disk the VPC disk image is taking up, and how much of it
are actual files (how much it really needs; I've deleted the one huge file
that I think caused this expansion). Also, I read the help about reclaiming
space; it said:

"Before using the Virtual Disk Assistant in Microsoft Virtual PC to reclaim
space on a virtual hard disk image, you must first use a third-party product
to "zero out" or permanently remove all data from the virtual hard disk
image. You can then use the Virtual Disk Assistant to finish the process.
Before you begin, be sure there is enough space free on your Macintosh hard
drive for the temporary file."

what is it talking about? What third-party product do I need, and anyway, I
don't want to remove ALL the data from the virtual disk image - just the
empty space! Is there nothing I can do to shrink it back to what it was
before?

Please advise...

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Related Messages

Re: Reducing size of VPC disk - reclaiming, fixed size, etc. - please help!

Sent: 02/16/2006
From: "Paul Power" <(email address - cut out)>
Message:

follow the steps in the thread posted over the past couple days:

PreCompactor (PreCompact) / Virtual PC Hard Drive Document Compression

Re: Reducing size of VPC disk - reclaiming, fixed size, etc. - please help - where"s my HUGE virtual disk file??

Sent: 02/17/2006
From: Michael Levin <(email address - cut out)>
Message:

On 2/16/06 9:08 PM, in article
(email address - cut out), "Paul Power"
<(email address - cut out)> wrote:

oh boy... I just tried a variant of this as suggested in another on-line
doc, and half-way through the empty space zeroing process, it told me my
disk file grew again! Now I only have 60 megs left on my main hard drive and
of course not enough space to compact... I'm in trouble and I need to reduce
this thing ASAP before my whole system refuses to run. I can't even find the
virtual disk file - can someone tell me how to find it? What's it called?!?
Worst case scenario I delete it and start from the beginning, unless someone
has a different suggestion. I have an external firewire drive with space on
it; is it possible to have VPC use that scratch space when compacting?

Show quoted text

> follow the steps in the thread posted over the past couple days:
> PreCompactor (PreCompact) / Virtual PC Hard Drive Document Compression

Re: Reducing size of VPC disk - reclaiming, fixed size, etc. - please help!

Sent: 02/18/2006
From: Michael Levin <(email address - cut out)>
Message:

On 2/16/06 9:08 PM, in article
(email address - cut out), "Paul Power"
<(email address - cut out)> wrote:

ok. I was able to copy everything to another hard drive with enough empty
space and then followed the procedure - defragged, zeroed empty space (about
10 Gigs, according to the erase program), and then "reclaimed space" in VPC,
which said it was successfully completed. But the size of the .vhd file has
not changed! Still 11 Gigs. I definitely don't need that much. Is there any
way to actually make it shrink the file to like 4 Gigs? Barring that, is
there any way to keep the .vhd file on another disk (an external drive)?

Mike

Show quoted text

> follow the steps in the thread posted over the past couple days:
>
> PreCompactor (PreCompact) / Virtual PC Hard Drive Document Compression

Re: Reducing size of VPC disk - reclaiming, fixed size, etc. - please help!

Sent: 02/19/2006
From: "Jim" <(email address - cut out)>
Message:

Thanks to ALL who may have had something to do with making the
PreCompactor routine available for compressing the VPC drive. I found
it easier to use than the Eraser approach. It works!

I hope you guys are all kidding about who should get the most credit...
but speaking as only a semi-techie that understands only half of the
finer points you are discussing... I like the PreCompactor routine and
am grateful to all who may have made it possible.

Cheers for the TEAM!

Re: Reducing size of VPC disk - reclaiming, fixed size, etc. - please help - where"s my HUGE virtual disk file??

Sent: 02/20/2006
From: Alan Quirt <(email address - cut out)>
Message:

In article <(email address - cut out)>,
Michael Levin <(email address - cut out)> wrote:

As far as I know you can run VPC with its files in any MacOS volume.
Look for files with extension .vpc7 (spotlight should find them fast). I
think the drive image is really a "package" file, and I recall someone
had trouble copying one a while back. You might do best to put it inside
an ordinary folder and copy the folder with its contents.

What I don't understand is why your drive image keeps growing. Mine
remains at about 4 GB after many months of use.

One thing I did years ago and have never regretted was to create a
second virtual hard drive (drive E: at present) and use it to store all
of my documents. That way if the C: drive becomes corrupted, I can just
reinstall without losing any data. It's also easier for backups since it
is only about 600 MB and changes rather slowly. I can back it up
incrementally using Retrospect by mounting it on my Mac desktop.
--
.... Al Quirt ... Ottawa Canada ...
.... Please remove anti-spam BIRD for email replies ...

Show quoted text

> On 2/16/06 9:08 PM, in article
> (email address - cut out), "Paul Power"
> <(email address - cut out)> wrote:
>
> > follow the steps in the thread posted over the past couple days:
> > PreCompactor (PreCompact) / Virtual PC Hard Drive Document Compression
>
> oh boy... I just tried a variant of this as suggested in another on-line
> doc, and half-way through the empty space zeroing process, it told me my
> disk file grew again! Now I only have 60 megs left on my main hard drive and
> of course not enough space to compact... I'm in trouble and I need to reduce
> this thing ASAP before my whole system refuses to run. I can't even find the
> virtual disk file - can someone tell me how to find it? What's it called?!?
> Worst case scenario I delete it and start from the beginning, unless someone
> has a different suggestion. I have an external firewire drive with space on
> it; is it possible to have VPC use that scratch space when compacting?

Re: Reducing size of VPC disk - reclaiming, fixed size, etc. - please help!

Sent: 02/21/2006
From: Tony Kavadias <(email address - cut out)>
Message:

On 2006-02-20 02:03:32 +1100, "Jim" <(email address - cut out)> said:

Yea, I was kidding... mostly! But offers of Guinness are always welcome!

;-)

I initially wanted to try to stop using Eraser because Eraser was
not able (willing?!) to zero out a disk without writing 4 passes of
other crap first, wasting lots and lots of time!

All I needed was for Eraser to only write zeros... once per block.
What Eraser was doing was overkill, and I wanted a tool that only
did the basic job of writing zeros to unallocated blocks on disk.

So I tried another (rather large!) tool, although it won't work
on FAT32 disks: Microsoft Services for UNIX. I basically got it to
run the command:

% (cat /dev/zero > /tmp/.zero) &; sleep 5; rm /tmp/.zero

which did the job of zeroing space on NTFS volumes, a lot faster
than Eraser did!

But that used an entire UNIX compatibility subsystem which didn't
do the virtual machine much justice. And I wanted a tool that
could also be used on FAT32 volumes. So I started making my own
tool under Visual C++.

I successfully wrote a tool that ran under the DOS Command Interpreter,
but it wasn't a very user-friendly tool and it made lots of assumptions
about its environment.

So me, being a non-fluent Win32 programmer (I know UNIX much more
than I know Windows!), decided to look for another tool first before
I spent more time making my own tool. And that was when something
caught my eye.

Virtual PC 2004 has a precompactor tool as part of the product. And,
Microsoft was actually posting trial versions of the product on their
Web site! Surely, there had to be some way to get their precompactor
tool from out of that archive!

After sifting through Microsoft's knowledge base for Virtual PC 2004,
I deduced that the precompactor was contained in a disk image
so that Virtual PC could mount it. And I realised that a way I could
get that disk image out of the package was to actually install Virtual
PC 2004 on my Windows XP installation under Virtual PC for Mac (I didn't
have a real PC to try this on).

So... after hours of installing Virtual PC 2004, I was able to locate
and copy over to the Mac side the disk image containing the precompactor
tool! After that, I was a happy chap! But one thing remained...

I mounted the disk image under Virtual PC, the precompactor started, and
it was able to zero out the spare space on my disk drive containers in
half the time it took SFU to do it! And it did it under emulation on
the Mac without failure.

So, the amount of time and resources it took me to cook up my previous
tool, fetch the Virtual PC 2004 SP1 trial, back up my C: drive,
install the Virtual PC 2004 product, extract the precompactor disk
image, and get Virtual PC for Mac to mount the disk image and run the
precompactor on my C: drive, and cross my fingers that my C: drive didn't
get ruined... I can only thank Microsoft for not putting the precompactor
on the Virtual PC for Mac CDs in the first place, or at least, tell Mac
users how to get at the tool and use it on their Virtual PC installation.

After that... I posted my findings to the group, and the rest
is history. The original post was entitled "Extracting precompact,
DONE!", in case you want to look for it.

For sure, it was delightful to see Precompact running on my Mac, and
effectively zeroing out my virtual disks exactly how I wanted it to!

Cheers!

--
-- tonza

Show quoted text

> I hope you guys are all kidding about who should get the most credit...
> but speaking as only a semi-techie that understands only half of the
> finer points you are discussing... I like the PreCompactor routine and
> am grateful to all who may have made it possible.

Post Reply | This is Spam! | Mark as Spam

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