Excessively large vdi Windows 7 Virtual Box

English Virtualization
1

I am using openSUSE 12.3, with virtualbox 4.2.12, and KDE 4.10.

I have a virtual machine running Windows XP. The .vdi file for the hard
disk isdynamically allocated, 156GB. It is only using up 77GB on the
Linux side, and on the windows side it is using 63GB. So I assume that
the extra 14GB in this vdi has to do with how VirtualBox is running the
machine. About 40GB of this was data files I had in Windows XP, which I
have now switched over to Linux in the past 2 years, and so I don’t need
that data on the Windows side anymore.

I bought a license for Windows 7, but it is an upgrade license, and not
a standalone license. So I cloned my Windows XP machine in VirtualBox,
and then installed Windows 7 over it. After the installation and
tweaking it so that it worked with Guest Additions and the network, I
went to clean up the hard drive on the windows side. SoI deleted the
40GB of data that I don’t need on the Windows side. So now in my cloned
computer, the hard drive that is running the operating system (Windows
7), which only has a few kb of data on it. Overall the storage space it
takes up on the windows side for the operating systemand what little
data there is is about 19GB. However, on the Linux side, this .vdi file
takes up 83.5GB.

The .vdi file is set up as an IDE controller in VirtualBox. I have not
tried to set up SATA yet.

What I am wondering is, how do I get my vdi file to more accurately
reflect the file size that is being used on the Windows side? I mean, it
is only 19GB of information on that drive, but VirtualBox shows it as
using up 83.5GB of space on my partition. I am running out of room on
that partition. This is only an initial installation of W7 in VirtualBox
with no applications at all. I need to install MS Office and a
proprietary program for my work, and not much else, but I am afraid that
when I do that, I will take up a ton more space in that partition.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

George

–
G.O.
Box #1: 12.3 | KDE 4.10 | AMD Phenom IIX4 | 64 | 16GB
Box #2: 12.2 | KDE 4.9.2 | AMD Athlon X3 | 64 | 4GB
Laptop: 12.3 | KDE 4.10 | Core i7-2620M | 64 | 8GB
learning openSUSE and loving it

2

nevermind, my W7 system had come kind of unrepairable major fault and I
am having to delete the whole thing and start over

–
G.O.
Box #1: 12.3 | KDE 4.10 | AMD Phenom IIX4 | 64 | 16GB
Box #2: 12.2 | KDE 4.9.2 | AMD Athlon X3 | 64 | 4GB
Laptop: 12.3 | KDE 4.10 | Core i7-2620M | 64 | 8GB
learning openSUSE and loving it

3

On 05/23/2013 06:09 AM, golson765 wrote:
> nevermind, my W7 system had come kind of unrepairable major fault and I
> am having to delete the whole thing and start over

Good old Windows. Whatever is wrong with your present configuration will soon be
cured by a complete meltdown.

In
http://dantwining.co.uk/2011/07/18/how-to-shrink-a-dynamically-expanding-guest-virtualbox-image/,
there is a blog for doing what you wanted to do. I have not tested it; however,
a Google search for “VirtualBox shrink vdi” came up with 12,900 results. Perhaps
something in there will help you.