Reduce VMDK disk

[Nick66]

I need to change my HD from traditional to SSD .

To do this i need to reduce all my vm vmdk disk ; now , they are all pre-allocated .

I want to stay with pre-allocated disk but i need to reduce them of 30-40% of space .

I need to reduce each vmdk from 40GB around to 25GB ; after this , i move some vm from HD to SSD .

Which is the better way to do this ??

It's necessary that i use ie. Acronis , Norton ,.. or using only vmware diskmanager command line i do the same things ??

If it's possible the more simple solution it's better for me , no problem if i need to buy Acronis , etc ..

regards

[piggyz]

u can treat your VM like real machines and so - supposing your 40 GB virtual disk are not full - create a new VDisk of desired, reduced size and then use any utility like Clonezilla, PartedMagic or whatever to clone the old Vdisk to the new Vdisk. Then simply transfer the new disk on the SSD, delete the old (from configuration) and u are done.

[Nick66]

I add a new 25GB empty vDisk to vm , and i start it with PartedMagic iso cd .

I clone the old disk in the new one .

I "disconnect" the old vmdk and start vm .

If all it's ok the vm start without any problem .

After shutdown , i move the vm in the SSD disk , correct ??

[piggyz]

Yepz, it should work.

[continuum]

PartedMagic ??? dubious

If you have a LiveCD with ghost I would rather use that - as it can resize NTFS-partitions quite reliably

I would also defragment all vmdks from inside the guest to make the down-sizing more flawless

[Nick66]

The big problem i think are the three ESXi5 vm inside vmware workstation .

I don't know if there's a tool for a disk-to-disk copy/clone for the new vmfs-5 filesystems .

Someone has an idea for this ??

[piggyz]

Sector by Sector copy option in Clonezilla.

And, BTW, I do clone NTFS partitions all the time with PartedMagic, and BTW again, I think Ghost is pure Symantec crap. IMHO.

[Nick66]

In Clonezilla website i see inside limitations .

The destination partition must be equal or larger than the source one .

ESXi5 vmdk , i don't know exaclty , but i think that it has more than one partition .

I start to clone with Clonezilla sector-by-sector from old 40GB vmdk to new 25GB vmdk and , in theory , after remove the old one , ESXi5 start without any problem .

The sector-to-sector copy , copy only sector "full" and not "empty" inside a new vmdk .

After , i have the possibility with a partition tool to adapt partitions until the maximum vmdk size .

All this is correct ??

[continuum]

> I think Ghost is pure Symantec crap. IMHO.

I completely agree if you mean ghost 14 and stuff like that - but ghost32.exe - a 5 Mb standalone executable is a very good tool

[Nick66]

Is Ghost32 a free tools ??

It's a command line or graphical tools ??

It's inside UBCD ??

[WoodyZ]

Is Ghost32 a free tools ??

No!

It's a command line or graphical tools ??

Both.

It's inside UBCD ??

If it is, it's done so illegally!

[piggyz]

There is an option that allow u to force the copy of any sector. Related with the resize of unknown partitions, that depend from the partition tool support for that type of partition. I don't know about any with ESX fs support.