Hi, I am running XP on my MacBook using Parallels. I use expanding disk (15 GB) . This is my problem: The total size of the folders on my C drive in XP is around 5 GB. But, when I check the size of the C drive it shows that 14.6 GB is occupied. I can't understand why is there a 9 GB discrepancy. I ran parallels compressor to see if this will reduce occupied space in C drive. But it made no difference. How to get back my 9 GB free space? Thanks. Regards, Murali
There's apparently a problem with reporting drive space. Look in the finder at the size of the .hdd file. That's the actual space being used on your Mac disk.
In the finder, the size of .hdd file is around 14 GB. So, there is still 9 GB space unaccounted for. Thanks. Murali
My guess would be that you have used some space later on in the drive so that parallels can't compress the space down to a more compact version. I don't have any inside knowledge of how the expanding disk works, but I'm guessing that it expands up to the last non zero block of disk. When you delete files under XP, the data are not removed/zeroed out, so the space is still being used. If you have a utility that zeros unused disk blocks that may help. After that, defragmenting the disk under XP may be useful as well (I've not done any tests if this shriks space or not, but it may help) and then see if the parallels compressor shrinks it further. If that fails, you could create a new disk, and copy all your old data to this (using something like parted/partition magic) as described in http://forums.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=4040 and see ifthe new disk is smaller. If it is, just use this new drive as your main one in the parallels config and remove the large one and you should be set.
"Zeroing ununsed disk space"--- I thought this is precisely what the parallels disk compressor is supposed to do. And, I have run it twice and both times I haven't seen any change in used up disk space. Infact, the problem is getting worse. The free space available on my C drive is reducing day by day without me adding any extra files. I cannot create a new disk because I have invested lot of time in installing xp proprietary software in the present disk. If I delete it I have to reinstall all of them, which I would hate to do. You were suggesting using disk defrag. I am wondering if it is safe to run the disk defragmentation option when running xp in Parallels? Thanks. Regards, Murali
I'm only using 1.7GB but the image is taking 14GB (Win XP SP2). Ran Compressor from Image Tools and the Compact option in Advanced on the HD setting twice. No effect at all. I'm running the Window's Defrag now. I will also delete the virtual memory and defrag again, then compress and compact. If there is any improvement, I will post here.
I got my image file down from 14GB to 1.5GB by using "Run Parallels Compressor..." under the VM pulldown menu, while the image was running. So the question I have is what are the other options for? There seems to be three: 1. Image Tools has a compression tool, but it seems not to do anything but take a lot of time. 2. The "Compact" option that you can get to from the properties page. Again, it doesn't seem to do anything. 3. From the VM System Menu, "Run Parallels Compressor..." is the only one that works.
Not to bring up an old thread from the grave, but I wanted to share my experience to help others. I initially created my virtual drive as 60 GB, as I was afraid to let it auto expand / shrink. I ran into problems in the past with VMWare Workstation 5.5. Basically the VMDK under VMWare Workstation would get severely fragmented, and performance would degrade. After playing around with Parallels for a few weeks now, I am pretty confident that it will not have the same issues. I hardly ever notice that it is in a VM, like I did running under Windows + VMware Wkst. I am also using OSX now instead too, instead of Windows. Anyhow, I tried the compressor tool on a 60GB virtual drive, and it was chugging away for over an hour. The status bar had barely moved, and that is when I decided to cancel and try True Image by Acronis. Within an hour or two, I had a fully functional VM again with my smaller drive. Obviously True Image is an additional cost for users who don't already own it. However, if you do own it, I would recommend going that route to shrink a drive. Besides, it seems like most Ex-Windows users own some software solution for imaging.
