To follow up on compression time.
I created a new VM on my Mac using all of the (recommended) steps, and selected Windows XP Home (64 bit) - I didn't know there was such a thing, but because my Mac is an intel core 2 duo, I figured what the heck and selected the 64 bit over the 32 bit option. This was a bit confusing. These recommended steps resulted in a Windows 30GB HD as seen in Windows.
I then installed Windows, all of my required software and data. However in the process I had to install software related to my network printer (HP 2840). This software when installed really only adds 222MB of required disk space, but in the process it creates a folder with an additional 1.5GB of install files folders and data. Usually a Windows install application uses the Temp file, but not this one.
At this point prior to cleaning up that goofy file and deleting all of my .tmp files and other junk that windows puts in there, I was able to reduce my required size from 13.5GB down to 7.2GB of the 30GB as seen by Windows.
When I looked at my VM it showed a file size of 13.5GB so I decided to do Compression.
45 minutes later all done and I now stand with 7.22GB for my VM. This was fantastic.
Now we get to where things changed a lot using the Compressor!
The reason for all of this is that I had a Windows VM that I set up about a year ago when I first migrated from Windows to the Mac environment. Of course at that time I had no idea how the Mac worked or how Parallels worked. For that matter I am still learning.
Anyway, what I had there was a 60GB VM within which I created 3 partions using Partition Magic. I re-created my file structure within the VM exactly as it was on the PC. I had my main C drive, E drive for photos (a ton of them) and my F drive for data. In total I probably used about 45 to 50 GB of my total 60GB Windows structure.
Of course being on the Mac I moved all of my Photos over to the Mac, and managed to clean up my data drive substantially (you know how you just collect junk over time). The bottom line is that I now only require about 13GB for my Windows environmnet, and even that will be reduced in time as I start using the Mac the way it should be used.
Because I was able to empty the Photos partition and move all of my required data over to C drive, I ran Partion Magic again and ended up with a single C drive. Now without going into this, the rebuild with Partition Magic didn't go all that smooth, however I finally got there, or at least I thought I had.
Now for Compression:
I did my first compression about a week ago, started in the morning at about 8:30am and it was finished by 10:00pm, however the result was not as expected, and I ended up with a 33GB VM.
I now went in and used Partition Magic again and found that I still had a C and E drive. Oh well, let's do it again. I finally got it to show as a single drive.
Compress again. I started compression at 10:30am yesterday and it's now 9:18 showing a size on disk of 21.64GB. By my estimation it should be finished by about midnight or perhaps 2:00am tomorrow.
It's running at exactly 509MB per hour.
Conclusion:
The first compression with the new VM took only 45 minutes because it started out as a clean install with little or any framentation.
The second VM, because of the fact that it's almost a year old is heavily fragmented on the Mac with pieces of it scattered all over the place. Those bits and pieces are probably all deleted, but all of that junk has to be sorted out and repositioned into a compact location.
Question:
Once this VM is compacted, and if I maintain compaction on a periodic basis (say once a week, or once a month), will the process still require days to complete, or perhaps just an hour or two? I hope it's the latter.
I have my VM set to 640MB of RAM. Would it perform better at the full 2GB that I have available? In other words, dedicate all of my ram to the VM just for the Compression procedure.
The above are my observations, and if anyone should have anything to add to this it would sure be great to hear from you.
Sorry to be so wordy!
Last edited: Nov 19, 2007