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rsnellmanFlag for United States of America

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How do you downsize/resize a vhd file for use with Hyper-V?

Hi, I am using Disk2VHD to virtualize a couple of my existing physical servers for testing purposes at this time.  I can get the servers converted to a .vhd file, but when I inspect the disk file, it says it is dynamic and set to for 223GB.  I would like to resize it to about 80GB max.

The physical server is Server 2003 R2 running SharePoint Services 3.0 with Internal Database.

I have tried VHDResizer and it will only downsize it to about half the original 223GB.  So, I was wondering what is your procedure or recommended tools to accomplish this task?

I know more admins must have run across this issue or maybe I am doing something wrong.

Thanks in advance.
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Lee W, MVP
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Hyper-V handles VHDs up to 2040 GB... why is 223 GB an issue?  It's Virtual PC that has a 127 GB limit on VHD size.
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It is an issue, because I am running a 500GB HDD on the box and would like to have multiple VMachines to perform testing on different OSes and setups.  Also, I did check the prepare for VPC checkbox on the Disk2VHD when I created the vhd originally, but it still made it 223GB instead of the limit of 127GB.
Disk2VHD does not resize the drive or obey Virtual PC limits - its limits are the same as Hyper-V if I'm not mistaken.  Considering the price of hard drives, why not get 2x2TB drives for $150-200 and be done with it.
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kevinhsieh
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Leew,
Yes that would be the best solution, but since this is a development project and my supervisor is very frugale with the funds that is out of the question.

Now, kevinhsieth, how do you get a VM to boot to a clonezilla disk?  We have Ghost Enterprise.  I could try that or this clonezilla you speak of.  Just not sure how to get a VM to boot to it.

Thanks.
Use Ghost if you have it. Boot the VM from a bootable .ISO.  I don't think that I have used a floppy image since I moved to Hyper-V.