I've created an expanding hard drive image (32GB) to install XP on it. Under XP, the drive is reported as 2.92GB used. This is right because I have only a minimum xp installation and some programs. Last week I used clonedvd to backup my dvd using XP under parallels. After creating a 9GB ISO, I copied it over to my OS X desktop and deleted the ISO in XP (emptied recycle bin too). After burning the file, I also deleted the ISO under OS X. However, I went back and checked the XP virtual image size and it's at 15GB. This is incorrect because XP reports only 2.92GB being used, yet the image is taking 15GB of space on my physical hard drive. The compact feature of parallels doesn't reduce the image size further. My internal hard drive is only 60GB (MacBook) so 13GB of wasted space is a lot to me. How do I fix this?
Before running the compacting function, do a defragmentation of the drive. As the disk gets used, all sorts of files will be mapped to various locations to the virtual hard disk, while lots of white spaces or no-longer-used sectors in between them increases. This leads to bigger virtual disk file size than 'actual' used space inside it.
