Hello everyone,
I want to convert a disk from fixed to dynamic for backup purposes.
It is currently to big to backup to a destination source.
I am using server 2012 r2 with hyperv( please be advised that I used hyper core and not a gui )
I read a quite a lot about it and here is how I am planning to do it.
1- Stop VM
2- Zero out ( 3th party tool ) to make the disk smaller ( which tool should I use? any suggestions )
3- Convert the disk to dynamic
4- Point the VM to the new dynamic disk ( or will this be done automatically?)
5- start the VM
My most important question is:
If my free space on my physical hard disk is 1 TB.
The current fixed VHDX is 2 TB ( actually 1.5TB is used instead of 2 )
Can I then just convert it to a dynamic disk or will this not work as I have to less diskspace?
2nd question:
will the converted disk automatically be selected in the VM that uses it or do I need to point to it manually?
3th question:
I read about a 3th party tool that zeros out empty space that you can use to shrink a vhd while converting it as only zero bits are compacted/removed when compacting the disk. If you delete data from the vm it just removes the pointers to the data but the data
is still on the disk and not all zeros so it won't shrink. Is this correct and if so which tool do you advise?
Many thanks in advance.
Andre