-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hello all. According to the vboxmanage reference of the virtualbox user's manual, it is possible to compact a dynamic virtual hard drive, so that it is only as big as the data currently stored on it. However, the manual states that the empty space needs to be filled with zeros for this to be effective. Of course, when you first create a dynamic drive, it grows only as you need it, so compacting it isn't necessary. However, if you've put a large amount of data on the drive, and then removed that data, the expanded space remains, so it would be nice to compact the drive. My question is how do I zero out empty space in a gnu/linux guest? I'm assuming I'd use dd on the raw partitions (I.E. /dev/hda1, /dev/hda2 and so on), providing it an offset I would somehow determine. The problem I see with this is what if the file system is fragmented, (ext3 in my case and swap), and you don't have an empty block of zeros all at the end, especially if you've added data, removed it, and added another set of data? Is there an easier way to do this for ext3 and swap with e2fsprogs, or some other utility? If not, and if dd is the only way, then could someone please explain how to determine the offset I would need to pass to dd, and how to make sure that data on the drive is in one contiguous block? Thanks in advance. Greg - -- web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc skype: gregn1 (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first) - -- Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager at EU.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFGlI267s9z/XlyUyARArREAJ9Zd/cmZNLwRH9duy+juFJuJLlwlgCgtkx/ y1wWCYEXwafTsv/h73+hfPQ= =i0nV -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
