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After Compacting, vhd is still huge

Source: microsoft.public.virtualserver
Sent: 04/01/2009
From: John
Message:

I have a virtual machine running on an external HD from my XP Professional
laptop. After creating Windows Server 2003, partioned into two drives (C @
25GB, D@40GB), then installing SQL Server and BizTalk, the vhd grew from 1.5
GB to 13.5 GB.
I ran the precompactor to clear the empty space, then ran the Disk Wizard to
compact the vhd. The size went from 13.5 GB to 12.5 GB - not much of a size
reduction. Looking at the C Drive shows the used space to be 13GB with none
used on the D Drive.
Is that 1 GB reduction all that I should expect?

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Related Messages

Re: After Compacting, vhd is still huge

Sent: 04/01/2009
From: "Steve Jain [MVP]" <(email address - cut out)>
Message:

On Wed, 1 Apr 2009 11:41:01 -0700, John
<(email address - cut out)> wrote:

Did you defragment before you ran the precompactor? All it takes is
one file at the end of the VHD to prevent it from being compacted.

--
Cheers,
Steve Jain, Virtual Machine MVP
http://vpc.essjae.com/

Show quoted text

>I have a virtual machine running on an external HD from my XP Professional
>laptop. After creating Windows Server 2003, partioned into two drives (C @
>25GB, D@40GB), then installing SQL Server and BizTalk, the vhd grew from 1.5
>GB to 13.5 GB.
>I ran the precompactor to clear the empty space, then ran the Disk Wizard to
>compact the vhd. The size went from 13.5 GB to 12.5 GB - not much of a size
>reduction. Looking at the C Drive shows the used space to be 13GB with none
>used on the D Drive.
>Is that 1 GB reduction all that I should expect?

Re: After Compacting, vhd is still huge

Sent: 04/01/2009
From: John
Message:

It certainly did need a defrag.

But, two hours later, after the defrag, after the precompact and the
compaction, the size of the vhd grew by 300 MB.

I think that I am going to be stuck with the vhd at 12.8 GB.

"Steve Jain [MVP]" wrote:

Show quoted text

> On Wed, 1 Apr 2009 11:41:01 -0700, John
> <(email address - cut out)> wrote:
>
> >I have a virtual machine running on an external HD from my XP Professional
> >laptop. After creating Windows Server 2003, partioned into two drives (C @
> >25GB, D@40GB), then installing SQL Server and BizTalk, the vhd grew from 1.5
> >GB to 13.5 GB.
> >I ran the precompactor to clear the empty space, then ran the Disk Wizard to
> >compact the vhd. The size went from 13.5 GB to 12.5 GB - not much of a size
> >reduction. Looking at the C Drive shows the used space to be 13GB with none
> >used on the D Drive.
> >Is that 1 GB reduction all that I should expect?
>
> Did you defragment before you ran the precompactor? All it takes is
> one file at the end of the VHD to prevent it from being compacted.
>
> --
> Cheers,
> Steve Jain, Virtual Machine MVP
> http://vpc.essjae.com/
>

Re: After Compacting, vhd is still huge

Sent: 04/01/2009
From: John
Message:

Hi Steve and Bo.

Drive C shows 14.5 GB used out of the 25 GB originally allocated.
Drive D shows 72 MB used out of the 40 GB originally allocated.

It appears to me that the 14.5 GB is not going to 'shrink' by much... not
only SQL 2005 and BT 2006r2, but VStudio 2005, an MSDN library, plus other
smaller apps. I only found out about being able to use Virtual PC this way
last week. It has been a real eye opener.

Note - this is now my 'golden' development server. I will be using clones
of this to do actual work. How I have been able to work at all - using all
of those programs on a laptop running XP, makes me wonder, how the heck I did
it, now.

Thanks for the interest and the help in asking the questions that made me
think.
John

Re: After Compacting, vhd is still huge

Sent: 04/01/2009
From: Bo Berglund <(email address - cut out)>
Message:

On Wed, 1 Apr 2009 14:11:01 -0700, John
<(email address - cut out)> wrote:

If you look at the disk properties *inside* the virtual machine, how
much data does it reports as being used?

Typically after installing what you described (SQLServer and BizTalk)
on top of Win2003 server you would expect a lot of data being used on
the drives.

--

Bo Berglund (Sweden)

Show quoted text

>It certainly did need a defrag.
>
>But, two hours later, after the defrag, after the precompact and the
>compaction, the size of the vhd grew by 300 MB.
>
>I think that I am going to be stuck with the vhd at 12.8 GB.

Re: After Compacting, vhd is still huge

Sent: 04/02/2009
From: Bo Berglund <(email address - cut out)>
Message:

On Wed, 1 Apr 2009 16:47:01 -0700, John
<(email address - cut out)> wrote:

Then you cannot expect it to be much smaller o the host than it is...

Suggestion:
Next time you create a virtual machine, do NOT set the dynamically
expanding disk to a size like this, use a larger size instead. The VHD
file on the host will stilll only be as big as needed to hold the data
but you will not run into space cram on the guest as quickly.
When you do there is no easy way out to make it bigger, it is like
getting a new drive on a physical computer where you have to image the
old drive onto the new one etc.

You should use this drive more for your data and files...

Another suggestion:
In you previous post you said that you had partitioned the virtual
hard disk into two drives (C: and D:). I'd suggest that you create
another virtual drive instead for D:. This way the two drives are on
different VHD files and will not compete for the space.

--

Bo Berglund (Sweden)

Show quoted text

>Hi Steve and Bo.
>
>Drive C shows 14.5 GB used out of the 25 GB originally allocated.
>Drive D shows 72 MB used out of the 40 GB originally allocated.
>
>It appears to me that the 14.5 GB is not going to 'shrink' by much... not
>only SQL 2005 and BT 2006r2, but VStudio 2005, an MSDN library, plus other
>smaller apps. I only found out about being able to use Virtual PC this way
>last week. It has been a real eye opener.
>
>Note - this is now my 'golden' development server. I will be using clones
>of this to do actual work. How I have been able to work at all - using all
>of those programs on a laptop running XP, makes me wonder, how the heck I did
>it, now.
>
>Thanks for the interest and the help in asking the questions that made me
>think.
>John
>

Re: After Compacting, vhd is still huge

Sent: 04/02/2009
From: Bo Berglund <(email address - cut out)>
Message:

On Wed, 1 Apr 2009 16:47:01 -0700, John
<(email address - cut out)> wrote:

Another comment:
If you use the virtual machine for development work (interactive
workstation style) then you will find that VirtualPC is more suited
for this. Did you install VPC2007 and test it? Much easier to
adminisrate and use than virtual server!

--

Bo Berglund (Sweden)

Show quoted text

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