Disk Full Error, but it is not

[Perryg]

The .VirtualBox folder is usually where all guests and snap shots are stored. I have no idea what is in it. You would need to look. All I know is the partition is full.
Look in the preference settings of VirtualBox and in the guest settings of the guest and make sure that the guest, and snapshots are actually going to where you think it is supposed to go.

[Okie2003]

OK, thanks for all the input. Based on what has been said I think I will advise her to try deleting the .VirtualBox folder which contains machine and Compressed.dat If that breaks it I see no more harm done than just deleting and staring over.

. . . Look in the preference settings of VirtualBox and in the guest settings of the guest and make sure that the guest, and snapshots are actually going to where you think it is supposed to go.

Thanks for this tip. Whatever happens I will have her direct them to a partition other that the vdi partition.

[mpack]

Based on what has been said I think I will advise her to try deleting the .VirtualBox folder

Do nothing of the sort. Deleting .VirtualBox will most likely trash all VMs. In fact, do nothing unless you know what the effect will be - don't guess.

In any case I rather doubt that a policy of randomly deleting folders you don't recognize is likely to make things better. And you were going to do this from a distance, on a laptop someone else is depending on?

As to what you can do: compressed.dat is not a file used by VirtualBox, that I know of. That and all backup vdi's, and all VDIs not needed on a daily basis, should be moved to an external hard drive.

Why all the partitions on that laptop? Part of your problem is that by dividing the hard disk into so many small partitions you limit the size of any one file. In fact if you sum free space across all of your partitions then you have plenty free space, but it's awkwardly distributed. I would have had two or three partitions at most.

Consider upgrading to a larger hard drive, around 320GB. And, reorganise into a minimal number of partitions (simplest for Linux hosts would be system+swap, Windows hosts would just have one system partition). If you want to impose your own organisation on drive space then fine, but use folders instead of partitions.

And IMHO: there is no substitute for you (or better yet your daughter, since she's the one depending on it) browsing around your filesystem every now and then, keeping yourself informed about free space, unnecessary space hogs (e.g. old backups that can be deleted, or at least shuffled off the drive), mysterious new folders and processes etc. Tracking disk free space is again easier if it's all one big partition.

[Okie2003]

Thanks for your concern and wise input. I agree with it in most cases and others reading this should take it to heart.

As to what you can do: compressed.dat is not a file used by VirtualBox, that I know of.

My conclusion as well. There was really nothing else there.

Why all the partitions on that laptop? Part of your problem is that by dividing the hard disk into so many small partitions you limit the size of any one file. In fact if you sum free space across all of your partitions then you have plenty free space, but it's awkwardly distributed. I would have had two or three partitions at most.

I agree completely and if it were my laptop I would change it. This was originally set up before she knew she needed virtualbox to access the school network. The plan was a working / & /home and a backup / & /home which could be utilized as distribution upgrades or changes came. That way there is always a reliable work install while the new install is tweaked. I have done this for several years on my office desktop and work laptop. When she was told she had to have XP & therefore virtualbox we had something like 3 hours to do it in so the biggest /home was converted to a vdi partition and the corresponding / partition was then used for data.

Consider upgrading to a larger hard drive, around 320GB.

I did, but due to the size of the computer this is a minidrive (maybe 2" X 1 1/4"). I could only find two sizes 80GB & 120GB, which was quite expensive compared to a standard laptop drive. I have rigged up a standard laptop drive in a USB case for her to transfer files to that she does not need on a day to day basis. Again, all of your points are well made and well taken.

Action taken: Verified that in preferences that her default machine folder is set to a partition that has room and not the vid partition. Deleted the unneeded 12.5 GB files in the vdi partition. Discarded the virtual machine from the virtualbox manager window. Recreated a new virtual machine using the old vdi. All appears to be working and it took less than 10 minutes. Much faster than reinstalling XP. We could not have done it if all your comments had not cleared up my thinking. Thanks so much.

[mpack]

Action taken: Verified that in preferences that her default machine folder is set to a partition that has room and not the vid partition. Deleted the unneeded 12.5 GB files in the vdi partition. Discarded the virtual machine from the virtualbox manager window. Recreated a new virtual machine using the old vdi. All appears to be working and it took less than 10 minutes. Much faster than reinstalling XP.

I'm glad to hear that you've made progress. Deleting that unnecessary 12GB file sound like a particularly good move!

However, I do still have a couple of concerns.

1. You mention discarding the old VM and creating a new one using the old VDI, after changing the default machine folder in preferences. I assume you appreciate that if the VDI is not moved then it continues to be limited by the size of your VDI partition, only future VMs (if any) will use the newly preferred partition.

2. Your daughter should be made aware that there are certain things she mustn't ever do: no snapshots, they take up too much host space (copying the VDI to an external drive makes a better backup). Never run sdelete, or any task similar to an exhaustive sector level disk check, as either one would cause the VDI to expand to its max size, and I'm still not clear if a max size VDI will physically fit in the partition space (it depends on how much allowance you made for the space lost to the host filesystem, and the difference between binary and decimal GB).

And of course, your daughter will be running XP with a 15GB hard drive; not very large by modern standards, so she must be conservative about what she installs, and keep track of disk space used inside the VM.

[Okie2003]

Thanks agian for your comments and clarifications. Thay are helpful to me and future readers.

However, I do still have a couple of concerns.
1. You mention discarding the old VM and creating a new one using the old VDI, after changing the default machine folder in preferences. I assume you appreciate that if the VDI is not moved then it continues to be limited by the size of your VDI partition, only future VMs (if any) will use the newly preferred partition.

Yes. I am aware of these problems, but there is no easy way to deal with them until the Hard Drive is restructured.

2. Your daughter should be made aware that there are certain things she mustn't ever do: no snapshots, they take up too much host space (copying the VDI to an external drive makes a better backup).

Yes, this has been a long thread, but we concluded that quite a while back (see first post). The snapshot concept sounds great, but they do eat disk space.

Never run sdelete, or any task similar to an exhaustive sector level disk check, as either one would cause the VDI to expand to its max size, and I'm still not clear if a max size VDI will physically fit in the partition space (it depends on how much allowance you made for the space lost to the host filesystem, and the difference between binary and decimal GB).

This is what is good about these discussions. I had never heard of sdelete. It appears that it is a Windows command line function. I am sure she will not do that. Is there a danger with basic Win XP disk clean up functions? Neither she nor I are proficient Windows users. (Hah, we barely make it in Linux!)

And of course, your daughter will be running XP with a 15GB hard drive; not very large by modern standards, so she must be conservative about what she installs, and keep track of disk space used inside the VM.

Yes, she knows this and up until this year had no additional Windows software installed. The one Windows application she regularly uses was running in wine. This year she did install a small medical dictionary (~750 MB).

Thanks again!

[mpack]

Yes, sdelete is a Windows program, used inside your Windows guest. I believe the Linux equivalent is ZeroFree. Sdelete is a contraction of "secure delete", but a more common use hereabouts is for zeroing unused disk space, prior to compacting the virtual disk. An unfortunate side effect is that writing to all unused disk sectors causes a dynamic VDI to jump to max size. As mentioned earlier in the thread, CloneVDI can be used instead, and has the advantage of being able to compact a Windows (or Linux) VDI without requiring you to run sdelete (ZeroFree) first inside the VM.

AFAIK, Windows cleanup does not involve initializing unused disk space, so shouldn't be a problem. Actually I should mention that I'm no expert on what Windows cleanup does, because I avoid automated cleanup functions. I prefer to do those things manually, knowing exactly what I'm deleting (or not).

[Okie2003]

Thanks for the information. I have used CloneVDI in wine a couple of times. i will keep this in mind.