Category: System Administration

Ever run into a situation that a virtual disk drive proved to small after a period of use? You can always add extra new virtual disk drives to provide extra storage for your virtual computer, but what if you require extra free space in one particular drive?

On the other hand, you can favour fixed size VHD files, and later discover you overdimensioned the virtual disk drive. How to make the fixed size VHD file smaller without converting it to the dynamically expanding type?

VHDMount utility and Symantec Ghost saves the day one more time. Here’s the procedure:
Continue reading “How to resize VHD file”

I am going to describe two possible methods to copy an entire physical disk drive to a Microsoft Virtual Hard Drive VHD file using Symantec Ghost. The method to choose depends whether you may remove source physical drive and plug it in another computer for the purpose of copying, or not.
Continue reading “How to copy physical drive to VHD file”

Writing previous post I had so many advices on handling the VHD files I’d like to share, I had to put them down too. But it’s a subject that deserves an article of it’s own. Since VHD files are usually very large files they require special treatment.
Continue reading “Handling VHD Files”

I am going to describe a quick way to convert Symantec’s Ghost GHO file to Microsoft Virtual Hard Drive VHD file. The process will not require a setup of a virtual machine. You’ll need:

• The VHDMount utility, which is distributed as a part of Microsoft Virtual Server but can be installed seperately.
• The GHOST32 utility, which is a part of Symantec Ghost installation.

Continue reading “How to convert GHO to VHD file”