Hyper-V, can anyone help a n00b?

Big Chris · 3 Dec 2012 at 20:18

I'm completely new to servers, got myself a test machine from work and installed Server 2008 R2 and just having a play around, mainly with VM's at the moment as I'm trying to knock up a few Win7 VM's in different VM programs so I know the basics of each. I'm then going to use the Win7 VM's for some MS desktop courses for work.

So... I've successfully created a Win7 VM in Hyper-V which wasn't too taxing, however I specified a 40GB drive for this machine during the setup. I now realise I don't need anywhere near this disk size for the machine as I'm not really going to install anything on it, just play with it/break it during my course exercises. I can't seem to find how I reduce the size of the HDD though and I'm getting all confused

The actual size of the .VHD file is ~13GB which is I assume the Win7 install, however the disk size shown in Disk Management having started the Win7 VM is 40GB. How can I reduce this to say 20GB?

Big Chris · 3 Dec 2012 at 20:41

I see, I guess that means that there's 40GB there should that VM want/need it, but if it doesn't then the host machine or other VM's can have it instead?

Big Chris · 4 Dec 2012 at 10:08

I assume that's when you'd convert the VHD's to fixed disks to stop everything fighting over the same physical HDD space on the host?

Big Chris · 4 Dec 2012 at 14:19

Out of interest then, how would I go about reducing the size of the HDD of the Win7 VM? I've had a Google but most of the results I've found go a bit over my head.

Big Chris · 6 Dec 2012 at 19:20

I tried that while I was playing around, I shrank the guest OS HDD down to 20GB but it just left xGB of space as unallocated. How do I then shrink the VHD within Hyper-V to eat up that unallocated space?

Big Chris · 6 Dec 2012 at 19:40

Ok cheers

I'm totally new to all this so just trying to get my head around it!

Big Chris · 6 Dec 2012 at 21:53

No probs JRS, thanks for your time mate. I did some Googling and had a play with the Hyper-V settings before I created this thread and found the options you mention regarding converting & expanding the disk, just nothing to reduce the size. As you say it won't grow beyond 20GB if I shrink the volume in the host OS, I just wanted to know if I could tidy it all up nicely cos I'm a bit OCD like that