Vmdk file not accesible after compacting

[vaibhavm]

Hi,

I m using V box and i used CloneVDI to compact size of vmdk/vdi files which were large by using same UUID option but after when i try to run VM -it gives error that vmdk files are inaccessible as :-
Could not open the medium :- disk.vmdk

please let me know if any way to resolve this or any solution ??

Thanks

[vaibhavm]

Just to add here i was able to read the vmdk file using --VMXRay from their site tool ,i think size mismatch happened ,any ideas pls???

[mpack]

CloneVDI has no ability to write VMDKs, so it cannot have affected the format of any VMDK that you have. In general, the modus operandi of CloneVDI is that it always creates a clone, which it modifies. Therefore it cannot possibly ever corrupt the original. You might want to review your original findings with these facts in mind.

[vaibhavm]

Ok i will try to use original file from backup and try again ,but i m no expert with this so i just simply wanted to minimize the size of sdcard.vdi file which was 2gb earlier & i m shore there is no data in it -after compress its 1 mb so can u please see attached screenshot what i used and tell if something i missed or wrong ??

[mpack]

Android? What filesystem is it using? CloneVDI can only be used for compaction if the filesystem is NTFS (Windows), or FATx (DOS and older Windows), or EXTx (Linux). It also needs to understand the partition table format, as that tells it what filesystem each partition uses. It's my understanding that Android devices don't necessarily follow PC norms for any of this. I notice that CloneVDI is saying that the filesystem is "none", which is not a good sign if you are saying that this disk contains data.

Of course you can still do compaction the old fashioned way: zero fill the unused areas of the disk from inside the guest OS and then clone the disk using the host. CloneVDI can certainly be used for the cloning the disk, but don't tick the "Compact" box.

And of course, the output of CloneVDI will be a new cloned disk, in VDI format.

[vaibhavm]

Its linux and yes its sort of android emulator -Genymotion to run/test android apps on pc .
ok i will try to use sdelete for it and see how it goes,Thanks

[mpack]

Unless I'm mistaken, Genymotion is not an Android emulator, it is Android. Specifically Android x86. It isn't Linux.

Do you have any reliable reference that says otherwise?

[vaibhavm]

Seems to be linux -This is what i can see :-

[mpack]

Sorry, but what am I supposed to be seeing? I see references to Android. I see no references to any other OS, and we have the fact I already pointed out, that CloneVDI didn't recognize the filesystem on the drive - and it recognizes the main Linux filesystems.

I guess the bottom line here is that you can't use the CloneVDI "compact" function on an unknown filesystem / non-MBR disk. The best you can do is use a guest tool to zero-fill the drive, then clone it, at which point any fully zeroed blocks will be discarded.