How do I REDUCE the size of a VM?

Hi

I created my VM as a 14Gb expanding drive but now want to reduce it to a 9Gb fixed drive.

Image tool wil allow me to change between fixed and expanding and it will also allow me to increase the size of my drive but I cannot find any options to reduce its size?

Cheers.

Robin

 

I would just make a new lean mean machine

I have made 7 before I got it right
(since June 2006)

Hugh W

 

I know but I don't want to lose all my installs and data.

Robin

 

Robster, you can create clean 9 GB hdd, add it to Parallels VM and use third party utilities to migrate your windows installation to this drive. I can be wrong, but seems Norton Ghost can do it.

 

I use Acronis TrueImage in both Parallels and VMWare - and it is much faster than any other approach.

It only works on Windows - alas. So you have to use a Windows machine to create a rescue disk ISO. Once you have that, you can use it under any host.
- create the new target virtual disk and make it availabe to the virtual guest.
- mount the TrueImage ISO as the CD, and set the guest to boot of that.
- clone the disk using automatic resizing - I have used it with FAT, FAT32, NTFS, and EXT3
- shut down
- load the new disk instead of the old one.

This is a great way to recompress sparse disks.

It's a fantastic imaging and recovery tool in general, which outshines ghost etc. It works over the network, too.

 

haralds: thank you for that valuable info - if you have time, a HOWTO would be very welcome on migrating/cloning images using TrueImage in Parallels.

 

HOWTO: Resize your partition with just Parallels and plenty of disk space

Here's my ghetto way of resizing Windows XP partition without any utilities whatsoever.

1. Make a copy of the .hdd file that holds your Windows partition. Let's call the original one A, and the copy B.

2. Make a new VM with a .hdd (let's call this C) the size you want A to become.

3. Freshly install Windows on C that matches the version installed in A.

4. After the first successful boot into desktop with C (i.e. end of installation process), shut C's VM down.

5. Go back to the VM of A, only this time, connect B as the second disk and C as the third. When you boot off A, you'll see B and C in Explorer.

6. Explorer should be set so that it can see all hidden & operating system files. Go to Tools > Folder Options > View and check or uncheck as appropriate.

7. Delete everything except for the NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM files at root on C.

8. Copy everything from B to C except for those aforementioned two files. Now, you could skip making B and just copy from A to C, but I'm doing this in case certain files in use on A interferes with copying process. Better safe than sorry.

9. Connect C as the first drive on the VM and disconnect the rest.

10. Check that the VM boots. You should now have what's basically the contents of A with the HDD size of C. You can discard A and B after confirming that everything is working as it should.

This should work with Windows 2000 and XP.