following your instructions ... i bumped into # virt-sparsify -v --compress winxp.img winxp.img.spars qemu-img convert -f qcow2 -O 'raw' -c '/VM/sparsify10f031.qcow2' 'winxp.img.spars' qemu-img: Compression not supported for this file format virt-sparsify: error: external command failed: qemu-img convert -f qcow2 -O 'raw' -c '/VM/sparsify10f031.qcow2' 'winxp.img.spars' # qemu-img info winxp.img image: winxp.img file format: raw virtual size: 5.0G (5368709120 bytes) disk size: 5.0G any idea ? -- Evaggelos Balaskas - Unix System Engineer http://gr.linkedin.com/in/evaggelosbalaskas