Help VMWare to shrink virtual drives

[Ralf Mimoun]

Hi,

I just wrote a small tool to help VMWare to shrink virtual drives. What it
does is simple: fill the free area of a drive with 0. For that, it creates a
file in the root dir (eg. "C:\~zapdisk~.~fill~") and writes zeros until the
drive is full. After that, it deletes the file. That works not for clones or
snapshots, sorry. And the small tool runs only with WinNT, Win2k and WinXP.

You can download it at http://stuff.rad-on.de/ZapDisk.zip. It's free, it's
small (32 kb), and it's easy to use, Just start it with the drive letter as
parameter, eg. "ZapDisk c:".

I don't take any resposibilities for the effects of that tool, for problems
of any kind etc. Use it on your own risk!

Ralf Mimoun

[Markus Becker]

Post by Ralf Mimoun
I just wrote a small tool to help VMWare to shrink virtual drives. What
it does is simple: fill the free area of a drive with 0. For that, it

Why, that's exactly what VMWare does when 'preparing the disk for
shrinking' ...

Markus

[Karsten Hoffrath]

Hi,

IIRC you can only do this if the VMware tools are installed inside the VM.

Post by Markus Becker

I just wrote a small tool to help VMWare to shrink virtual drives. What it does is simple: fill the free area of a drive with 0. For that, it

Why, that's exactly what VMWare does when 'preparing the disk for
shrinking' ...
Markus

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[Karsten Hoffrath]

Hi,

at the following link you can find a tool (and some others) which does the same:

http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vmtools.html

This program runs under "DOS, Win, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris and Minix". I've used it under Linux (x86) and it worked without any problem.

It can be scary to see the filesystem filling up ;)


Karsten

Hi,
I just wrote a small tool to help VMWare to shrink virtual drives. What it does is simple: fill the free area of a drive with 0. For that, it creates a file in the root dir (eg. "C:\~zapdisk~.~fill~") and writes zeros until the drive is full. After that, it deletes the file. That works not for clones or snapshots, sorry. And the small tool runs only with WinNT, Win2k and WinXP.
You can download it at http://stuff.rad-on.de/ZapDisk.zip. It's free, it's small (32 kb), and it's easy to use, Just start it with the drive letter as parameter, eg. "ZapDisk c:".
I don't take any resposibilities for the effects of that tool, for problems of any kind etc. Use it on your own risk!
Ralf Mimoun

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