Virtualized Client Is Too Large
 

I virtualized a Windows 2000 machine using VMWare Converter. After the conversion, the client runs fine in VMWare.

Checking the disk space usage within the client shows 3.3GB of disk use, which is the same as reported before the conversion.

Checking actual disk space usage on the server, the space used is 6.6GB. So there's a 3.3GB discrepancy.

I shrunk the client disk with VMWare Tools from within the client, which did not do much in changing the size. I also ran defragment on the client drive from the VMWare server. Still no change.

Any ideas how to recover that space?

How big is the actual space allocated to the client? Sounds like to me what your seeing is the pre-allocated space given to the virtual machine. The OS might only take up 3.3GB but 6.6GB or so was allocated, which VMware will pre-format for use.

No, the hard drive size is 9.7GB, the size of the original hard drive. I told the converter to grow the files as needed.

Ok, Tricky ...

Issue resolved. I went back into the client itself and ran defrag, which it needed really bad. Reshrunk again, and the size is reduced to 3.8GB. Much better.