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iluvmymactoo · Dec 16, 2004, 03:23 PM

Can the amount of disk space be reduced in VPC 7?

I have done "Reclaim Disk Space" but that hasn't really done anything. I notice in folder; home/documents/virtual pc list/windows xp is 4.3GB. Can this actually be made smaller?

Jacke · Dec 16, 2004, 04:04 PM

I don't think it can (if it's the same as v.6). The best thing you can do is to make a new (fixed size) image and copy everything over to that.

iluvmymactoo · Dec 16, 2004, 04:39 PM

Originally posted by Jacke:
I don't think it can (if it's the same as v.6). The best thing you can do is to make a new (fixed size) image and copy everything over to that.

How do I do that? I know if I can convert the current virtual hard drive to a fixed size image just in the virtual pc 7 "virtual disc assistant". Is that the same thing?

Thanks

Jacke · Dec 16, 2004, 05:33 PM

It won't get your space back, but it will stop the HD image from ballooning to several GB. You can create a new drive with the Disk Assistant, then copy over the stuff from the old drive (don't know the best way, suppose you could do it in the Finder if you mount both drives) and set the new one as C, then toss away the old (the old drive image will be moved out of the "windows xp" package when you unmark it in the VPC prefs, if it's like v.6).

iluvmymactoo · Dec 16, 2004, 07:27 PM

Originally posted by Jacke:
It won't get your space back, but it will stop the HD image from ballooning to several GB. You can create a new drive with the Disk Assistant, then copy over the stuff from the old drive (don't know the best way, suppose you could do it in the Finder if you mount both drives) and set the new one as C, then toss away the old (the old drive image will be moved out of the "windows xp" package when you unmark it in the VPC prefs, if it's like v.6).

I'm going to have to experiment a bit with this perhaps.

I created a new drive with a limited 2GB and I could mount both drives, but could not figure a way to transfer the old one into the new one (Disk Utility won't do it).

So if I were to create this new drive with a limited capacity first can I do a fresh install from my xp cd into it? I'm not sure how that's done.

Jacke · Dec 16, 2004, 07:35 PM

That should be possible (as long as XP doesn't require more than 2 GB). Just de-select your current C drive in the VPC prefs and select the new one, and the next time you start it should say something like "press any key to boot from CD". Then you can install.

You can also try just drag-and-drop copy the files over from one disk to the other when they're both mounted in the Finder. It will add some unnecessary .DS_Store files, but I think everything will copy over fine.

wataru · Dec 16, 2004, 08:46 PM

As I recall, older versions of VPC would let you reclaim erased space in a disk image, but only if you first used a defragger or whatever to move all of your data to the beginning of the disk. Otherwise, the empty space is made up of tons of fragments all over the place and VPC can't reclaim any of it.

iluvmymactoo · Dec 17, 2004, 01:36 AM

Ok So what I did intially was create a new disk with limited capacity of 2GB then mounted both. I then started to copy one to the other but just as it got to 99% complete it stopped with the message there wasn't enough space available.

So I trashed the second drive. Then suddenly the original blew out to 15GB????

So I trashed that one too and reinstalled it. But this time I did not install SP2. I did not create a fixed drive this time either. The final size is 1.18GB (with SP2 it was 4.8GB). I'm not quite sure why the big difference.

I haven't installed any additional windows software and don't intend to. Basically I'm just using it to test websites under a windows platform.

Now here's my idea? When you install the windows OS (in this case XP Home) it allocates a virtual partition of 15GB, but once all is done (minus SP2) the actual installation is 1.18GB. If you then convert this drive to a "fixed disk" it assumes you want it to be 15GB (the size of the virtual partition) and that's what it creates the fixed disk size to be. When converting an existing drive to fixed you don't get the choice to decide what size you want to fix it to as you do when you are creating an empty fixed drive.

I think that although my current drive exists as a dynamically expanding drive it won't actually get any bigger because I won't be installing anything into it?

You cannot reclaim zeroed space simply by defragging. You actually have to use a third party software (what ever it might be the manual makes no reference to one?) to actually delete the zeroed space and then defrag and then reclaim disk space. As I don't know what this mysterious 3rd party software is I will leave it as it exists and see what happens.

Sven G · Dec 17, 2004, 12:31 PM

Originally posted by wataru:
As I recall, older versions of VPC would let you reclaim erased space in a disk image, but only if you first used a defragger or whatever to move all of your data to the beginning of the disk. Otherwise, the empty space is made up of tons of fragments all over the place and VPC can't reclaim any of it.

1. http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/download.php - the program Eraser, that is.

2. Use the VPC virtual disk drive utility to reclaim the erased free space.

At least, that was the procedure until version 6.x...

iluvmymactoo · Dec 17, 2004, 03:03 PM

Well my new 1.8GB drive started to grow without any additions. I powered off my iBook and later when I came back on the drive suddenly was 2.5GB.

So I created a new virtual drive using disk assistant and I made it a fixed drive of 2GB. Then I inserted the XP cd and installed that into my new fixed drive.

That's the way it's done I have discovered. I deleted the other drive and now I have a drive that will not blow out. I still haven't installed SP2, but I figure it's just bloatware in any case. I can still download the security patches.