{"id":378,"date":"2009-12-12T18:23:35","date_gmt":"2009-12-12T23:23:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ikriv.com\/blog\/?p=378"},"modified":"2009-12-12T18:23:35","modified_gmt":"2009-12-12T23:23:35","slug":"minimizing-your-virtual-pc-hard-drive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ikriv.com\/blog\/?p=378","title":{"rendered":"Minimizing Your Virtual PC Hard Drive"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just installed Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 in a virtual PC (Microsoft Virtual PC 2007). It is kinda slow, but it works.<\/p>\n

In the process I created two “baseline” images – a “pure” Windows XP install, and the original VS 2010 just after the installation. What I found that the virtual hard drive size may increase considerably as you start using the system. Here’s the algorithm I used to minimize the size of the “baseline” file:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Shut down the virtual PC<\/li>\n
  2. Copy virtual hard drive to another file<\/li>\n
  3. Edit your virtual PC settings to mount the copy as a second hard drive<\/li>\n
  4. Run the virtual PC.<\/li>\n
  5. Remove pagefile.sys from the copy. Make sure it does not<\/u> end up in the recycle bin!<\/li>\n
  6. Defragment the copy using Dave Whitney’s defragger<\/a> (google it if the link is broken).<\/li>\n
  7. Using CD menu of the Virtual PC mount “Virtual Disk Precompactor.iso” from “C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Virtual PC\\Virtual Machine Additions\\” on your host system.<\/li>\n
  8. The precompactor application by default zeroes out free space on all mounted hard disks. Stop it and use command line options to precompact only the second virtual hard disk.<\/li>\n
  9. Shut down your virtual PC.<\/li>\n
  10. From Virtual PC Console choose VHD wizard and compact the baseline disk.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    These operations may take a while, but it is well worth it – I went from 4+GB image to 1.8GB.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Just installed Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 in a virtual PC (Microsoft Virtual PC 2007). It is kinda slow, but it works. In the process I created two “baseline” […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"Layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-ikriv","post-378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-hack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ikriv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ikriv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ikriv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ikriv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ikriv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ikriv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ikriv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ikriv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ikriv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}