Compact a PLAIN disk?

D

d-v-c@mindspring.com

Junior Member
According to Windows the disk size is 32GB of which less than 10GB are used. So I want to decrease the size to 12GB.

Somehow my HDD is a PLAIN one. Which seems to be unable to be compressed by the Disk Tool. (My disk doesn't show up in the list.)

It seems even though it is a PLAIN disk, there should be a tool that can create a new 12GB disk -- either PLAIN or EXPANDING -- and then copy the 9GB of CONTENT from my current 32GB disk to it and then erase the current disk.

In fact, a CLONE TO NEW DISK would be ideal.

Am I missing a Parallels tool that would do what I need to do?

Is there a procedure that I can follow? Could find anything posted that I was sure would work on a PLAIN disk? (Why even support PLAIN?)
 
You can convert from plain to expanding
page 12 and then compact
Please see parallels Image tools user guide

Please perform backup of Virtual Machine using one of the suggestions in
Parallels Desktop for Mac user guide from
http://www.parallels.com/en/download/file/doc/Parallels_Desktop_for_Mac_User_Guide.pdf
on page 243, e.g cloning Virtual Machine, or simply copying Virtual
machine folder (when Parallels Desktop is in stopped state), such
operations if incorrectly performed can lead to data loss.
 
Total confusion.

1) From XP the Image Tool doesn't show my HD which led me to think it must be PLAIN.

2) With XP stopped, from Parallels the Image tool showed the COMPACT button which it should NOT do if the disk is PLAIN.

3) Clicking COMPACT -- would not do anything claiming, correctly, that there were Snapshots. So I deleted both Snapshots. Now, COMPACT starts.

4) BUT according to the manual I should do a 2 stage process beginning with the Tool under XP. Is using 2-stages still recommended?

5) Now under XP, the disk shows up. WHY DOESN"T THE DOCS SAY SNAPSHOTS MUST BE DELETED!

5) I expected COMPACT to ask how big the disk should shrink to. How much will Compact shrink a disk?
 
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2 stages are different
1. One is from within Windows and it does temp file cleanup, and ntfs compressing
2. This is done from Mac OS side and it is not related to OS installed

Snapshots, and undo disk are not supported as after compact any snapshot is invalid
 
I understand that.

1) The fact my disk did not show-up from the XP side was becaue there were Snapshots -- yet Parallels didn't provide a message stating THIS was the reason it didn't put the disk in the list. The docs say if the disk doesn't show-up it's because it was a PLAIN disk. True, but not the whole story.

2) The fact the Compact process would start BEFORE the disk had been cleaned is confusing. If Step 1 is required, Step 2 shouldn't start until Step 1 has been done.

3) The docs say Step 1 can take a long time. An odd message considering Step 1 took 1 hour and Step 2 took 24 hours!!! How can it take 24 hours to copy 24GBs from the old V file to a new smaller V file -- and then delete the old V file?

4) And, why isn't the Expanding file DYNAMIC. If Parallels can auto ADD blocks when needed, why not Remove unused blocks when you exist from a VM?
 
Compacting a LARGE XP disk

I'm also having problems compressing my XP virtual hard disk. I don't actually remember what choices I made when I installed the disk, but XP reports having a 300MB disk of which 103MB is free. Mac often gives me the "less than 256 free; can't start guest OS, free up some disk space".

I originally thought I'd be using Windows all the time, but have found (duh) the opposite to be true, so I really want to start taking apps off the windows side and moving my files to the Mac side, but first I really need to pare down that Windows disk.

I've run the compression from the windows side, and I've then run it from the Mac side, but it doesn't seem to compact winxp.hdd. It does take hours to run, however. Any thoughts?
 
You need to free some disk spaces on Mac at least several GB
Also if you did Compression once, there will be no effect in subsequent compressions
 
I think I see what's happening. The Mac side of the compression has never been completed. I have 16GB ofree space n my Macintosh HD. I started the Mac side yesterday morning and the indicator bar still looks like its at around 10%. I'm remembering now that one time eventually the compressor stopped responding; and another time I might have clicked cancel, but I've never actually gotten a complete Mac-side compression.

With the winxp.hdd file taking 223GB (and other mac files taking up the remainder) and 16GB free on the Mac HD, is it feasible to decompress the windows virtual disk?

If so how long might this take?
If not what other alternatives are there?
 
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