Comments on: How To Shrink Your Virtualbox VM And Free Up Space For Your Hard Disk

By: Cómo recuperar el espacio tomado por los discos de expansión dinámica de VirtualBox « AI-Dev

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:29:30 +0000

[...] How To Shrink Your Virtualbox VM And Free Up Space For Your Hard Disk [...]

By: Cliff

Cliff — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:53:06 +0000

similar command works with Ubuntu 9.04 host using VBox 3.0.4.

VBoxManage modifyhd –compact /path/to/your/VM.vdi

By: Lance Wig

Lance Wig — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 18:51:15 +0000

Great and useful tutorial. Thank You. I was able to get the VboxManage modifyvdi command (with lowercase b) to work fine on Mac OS X Leopard with VB 2.2.4 http://bit.ly/yHk1t

By: Conor

Conor — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 04:03:28 +0000

the smae command should work on a Mac host. except has slightly renamed switches. just open up a terminal windows and run the command.
VboxManage modifyhd /path/to/your/VM.vdi –compact

By: john

john — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 17:13:52 +0000

The command “VBoxManage modifyvdi /path/to/your/VM.vdi compact” works with version 2.2.4. Just make sure you type VBoxManage instead of VboxManage.

By: Damien

Damien — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:23:53 +0000

Theoretically, the method is the same for Mac OSX users, but I haven’t give it a test yet, so I can’t confirm whether the above method works in OSX or not.

I will update again as soon as I have tested it out. :)

By: Rcamp

Rcamp — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:54:14 +0000

I don’t suppose there is a method for Mac OSX users is there…?

By: VBoxUser

VBoxUser — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 06:07:07 +0000

Has anyone found a way to change the UUID yet? This being to fix the outcoming image from clone performed while the modifyvdi was disabled in the 2.x versions before current.

By: shadowatthesun

shadowatthesun — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:50:25 +0000

You are the best man…
I only need these command (virtualbox 2.2.4):
1. sdelete -c c:/
in windows
2. VboxManage modifyvdi HardDisks/Win.vdi compact
in my host..
cool..

By: Damien

Damien — Sun, 24 May 2009 09:32:57 +0000

Thanks for your kind words. I guess that’s because I live and breathe technology everyday

By: svetlyachok

svetlyachok — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:26:50 +0000

Thanks Damien. I’m surprised how do you write a bunch of useful articles while on other blogs i read 1 needed article, then go away.

Regarding this article. Glad that command “VboxManage modifyvdi |—| compact” worked on my Intrepid with VirtualBox 2.2.2. However i faced one difficulty with it – “bash: VboxManage: command not found”.
The workaround was to change “VboxManage” to ‘/usr/lib/virtualbox/VBoxManage’ (path to executable with quotes), followed by arguments mentioned in article.

By: Eagleman

Eagleman — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 09:51:24 +0000

IT WORKS!

What I did not do (read the f** manual!) is running SDELETE in my XP guest OS.

CLONEHD actually shrunk my vdi from 15.3 to 9.3 GiB.

Thanks everybody!

Eagleman

By: VBoxUser

VBoxUser — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 05:16:13 +0000

@Eagleman
clonehd did indeed shrink my image. I would recommend following all of the steps including defragging and zeroing out the empty space to ensure a successful shrink. The one drawback with this method is UUID change.

By: Eagleman

Eagleman — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:36:09 +0000

Great, but is does not work.

The clonehd command creates a new vdi which is exactly as large as the original vdi, 15.3 Giga Bytes.

However, windows (the vdi is a virtual XP system) reports that it
only uses 8.9 GiB.

Your thoughts please.

Eagleman

By: VBoxUser

VBoxUser — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:41:41 +0000

Thank you for your writeup. I found your work-around for the missing compact feature very helpful. One thing to note is that using clonehd as a workaround changes the UUID. I have not found a command to manually revert the UUID for the purposes of making it a drop in replacement for the pre-shrunk VDI. Have you encountered a solution?

By: Linux Readers » How To Shrink Your Virtualbox VM

Linux Readers » How To Shrink Your Virtualbox VM — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:40:48 +0000

[...] Source Share and Enjoy: [...]

By: VirtualBox: come ridurre le dimensioni dei dischi fissi virtuali - Geekissimo

VirtualBox: come ridurre le dimensioni dei dischi fissi virtuali - Geekissimo — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 10:01:08 +0000

[...] Via | MakeTechEasier [...]

By: Como compactar sua Virtualbox VM e liberar mais espaço no seu disco rígido. « Xpf’s Weblog

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:00:32 +0000

[...] How To Shrink Your Virtualbox VM And Free Up Space For Your Hard Disk [...]