Tag: windows xp

I have one of the fastest SSD drives, but unfortunately didn't have the heart to buy the 240Gb, but the 120GB version. Now, 120GB is definitely enough, but this is my primary machine, and I'm doing several different kinds of things on it, so I need space for all the projects.

How do I keep it clean:

CleanMyMac

First I run automatic tools like CleanMyMac (free):

It definitely will find stuff that you missed.

Disk Inventory X

This is another type of program - it says how much disk is used by any folder, so it's easy to find the bigger users of space:

With it I found the /private/var/vm/sleepimage file (8gb) - keeps the data when the laptop goes to sleep. I can safely use the 8gb space until my laptop goes to sleep.

It is free.

OmniDiskSweeper

Same as the former, but all is textual.

Windows XP

I have a Windows XP vm. Keeping it clean is not easy. I use Free Disk Analyzer. It works similarly to OmniDiskSweeper and Disk Inventory X:

System Volume Information

Last time I saved 2.79 GB from this folder. My Computer -> Preferences -> System Restore (there's a slider in XP).

Compacting VirtualBox (.vdi) VMs

VirtualBox is great, because it it's free, but it has many quirks - not that good integration on copy/paste, files, shortcuts and so on. The biggest issue is that compacting the image is weirdly done

• Defragment the VMs drive (this step is always important regardless of the virtualization software)
• Zero out the free space. Now this is unnecessary with VMWare and Parallels. It is done with sdelete - a free windows software by SysInternals (you remember these guys? Mark Russinovich?).
  • command is "sdelete -c -z c:\"
• Compacting the virtual disk (.vdi) is done with this command (the command comes with VirtualBox) (case-sensitive):
  • "VBoxManage modifyhd /fullpath/to/windowsdisk.vdi --compact"

Other concerns