Vista - VMs, defragmentation and undo disks

Hi,

I would like to test my ideas, if they are wrong..

I think defragmentation does not give so much gain
as for real machines, if VD is small, compared to physical one.
But it is still worthy to do it, at least plain file defragmentation.

I think, if one uses undo disk on VPC,
defragmentation could cause excessive work
for later disk merging.
Therefore it is good to postpone defragmentation
until undo disk is merged, then cancel undo seeting
launch VM and perform defragmentation.

Am I right ?

--
Poutnik

>Am I right ?

Pretty much. The only thing I'd add is that defragmenting a dynamic
disk is not a good idea, even if you don't have undo disks enabled. It
has the potential to balloon the size up quite a bit. If it really
gets heavily fragmented, then you should go through the procedure for
compacting the disk rather than just defragmenting it.

--
Bob Comer




On Tue, 3 Feb 2009 08:20:40 +0100, Poutnik
<poutnikletspamisoutofabox@xxxxxx> wrote:

In article <0dcgo4thjn8gm93klk1e9cr6fkpkj8j1d7@xxxxxx>, bobcomer-
removeme-@xxxxxx says...I would use favorite JKDefrag with default settings,
it compacts well in reasonable time.

--
Poutnik

On Tue, 3 Feb 2009 17:09:45 +0100, Poutnik
<poutnikletspamisoutofabox@xxxxxx> wrote:
But, you would still need to compact the VHD. After you defrag, there
are additional steps to take to compact the actual VHD file. Defrag,
precompact, compact.

--
Cheers,
Steve Jain, Virtual Machine MVP
http://vpc.essjae.com/

In article <dg0ho41jvvrqn7786ah99ng1sbtqa7uc3g@xxxxxx>, noreply.-
@-.essjae.com says...Hm, interesting pointing out.

I have obviously missed something, supposing dynamic disk
would shrinking if compacted by defrag.

--
Poutnik

On Tue, 3 Feb 2009 19:45:53 +0100, Poutnik
<poutnikletspamisoutofabox@xxxxxx> wrote:
it's a common misconception. Defragging won't decrease the actual
size of the VHD file on the host, in some cases it can increase it.
After you defrag it, you need to zero out the empty space (tool is
included with VPC), and then compact it via the Virtual Disk Wizard in
VPC)

--
Cheers,
Steve Jain, Virtual Machine MVP
http://vpc.essjae.com/

Steve Jain [MVP] wrote:Do you prefer that to sdelete?
--
..NET: It's About Trust!
http://vfred.mvps.org

In article <O1rBVijhJHA.5732@xxxxxx>, karl@xxxxxx
says...Well, sdelete was in the first place I was thinking about,
when topic came to free space zeroing....

--
Poutnik

Poutnik wrote:I like that I can script the defrag/sdelete sequence so I don't have to pay
attention until it's done.
--
..NET: It's About Trust!
http://vfred.mvps.org

In article <OxljPYlhJHA.1172@xxxxxx>, karl@xxxxxx
says...There was said in web - found yesterday, but I lost link,
that sdelete is not useful for that, "writing 00, than FF, then random"

--
Poutnik