Waldo120

Thanks, I'll try it, but that sounds like the other disk cloning software I tried. I suspect it will result in the same thing (needs windows install disk to re-install).

Update, tried scandisk first, then copy disk image to another smaller vhd. Same issue as before. Guess I need to go looking for a windows disk for exactly my windows install. Anyone have any idea why defraggler didn't do as expected?

Alan, I think you misunderstand. I'm not booting my host machine into a vhd nor have the virtual machine running while defragging the vhd. I'm simply mounting my vhd as a disk on my host machine, and trying to defrag freespace on that vhd disk (with the virtual machine off). When I say I want to "boot a vhd" I'm referring to booting it under virtual PC as a virtual/guest computer. Which is the ultimate goal (right now I cannot because the vhd disk is too large). All discussions about copying from one drive to another are meant to be from my backup to a 2nd empty vhd disk that is sized properly and while both vhd's aren't booted. All defrags discussed are of a vhd file that is not currently booted. I've now tried defraggler defrag freespace to allow me to shrink the partition. Defraggler seems to hang and never finishes. Trying to post screenshot of this and disk management, but I can't figure out how on this webpage. Where do I upload images to "my media" so I can attach it to this conversation? Tried using robocopy and it didn't boot at all. Couldn't find bootable disk. I tried a disk image program, and my vhd now boots, but I get an error that windows need to repair because my hardware changed (don't remember getting that when I did this before). I put in my windows disk, tried to repair and it says my installed version doesn't match the disk version. My disk is a special disk that has all versions of win 7 on one disk. I tried installing windows as if it were an upgrade, and it tells me to boot windows and install my upgrade from there. So I turned off the virtual PC, ran a scandisk, found some errors, now it wont boot. BOOTMGR is missing. I think I'm going to try the disk image program again, but this time scandisk before imaging. I think at this point it would be a good idea to go into some more background, given the scandisk errors. This computer was locking up when streaming video. However, it was still bootable. I booted it up, successfully backed up to a vhd, and shutdown. So I'm thinking the scandisk errors came from a previous lockup's. I then reformatted to see if it was a software issue. It still locked up. So I brought the computer into a store and they replaced the video card and ran tests, and everything is running fine now. However, I don't have my backup working.

Looks like a simple copy didn't work. Robocopy was unable to copy 212 directories, 507 files, containing 265.10 Mb of data. I'm going to try some kind of partition copier. Anyone have any idea why my original problem (defraggler hanging up and not finishing defrag of freespace) isn't working?

Thanks, I must've been thinking of copying from a live drive this whole time. And I like making a vhd file my backup because then you can still boot up your backup. For example I forgot to deactivate Adobe CS before reformatting and now I can. There always seems to be some kind of nuance that you can't do unless you can boot the system. I couldn't get TeraCopy to copy a drive to a drive without buying the pro version, so I'm running robocopy. There are a few folders it's already complained about "Access is denied", but I think it'll still work, guess we'll see. The folders with access denied already are C:\PerfLogs and C:\$Recycle.Bin

Pusher, I made sure to copy the VHD before doing any modification. There is an un-edited version left on my server. Alan, in my experience just copying the files wasn't good enough. It would miss system files, for example like the system reserved partition, and not make a boot-able windows. I don't think I've used tera copy before. Have you used it for this purpose before and know for sure that it will catch everything, so that a disk is boot-able? I've found that only things that copy on the partition level ever seem to every work. Any idea's as to why defraggler is working in this way?

Also, if you set your page file to be the same size always (set min and max to the same) then once you defrag it using boot defrag, it won't fragment again. This is usually the windows system file that's large enough and critical enough to matter.

So I have a vhd file that is a backup of a computer before a reformat. However, in order for MS Virtual PC to connect to the VHD, I must first make it smaller then 120 Gb. So I'm using defraggler to defrag freespace before I shrink the partition. I copied the VHD to my local disk, mounted it in computer management, then opened defraggler and told it to "defrag freespace" on the drive letter that was mounted for the VHD. When it first starts things are going pretty fast it says about 10 minutes to finish, and I see plenty of drive map activity. However, as time goes on, the amount of time grows to 1-2 hours, and I don't see much activity on the drive map. I've left it for 2 days now and it still says 1-2 hours to complete. Only about 33% done (got the first 28% or so done in the first 10-20 minutes). I should note that I'm doing this on an SSD. I know you shouldn't defrag SSD's in general, but I'm only doing this once. I also tried doing this by leaving the vhd on my synology server, and doing this over the network, but that resulted in the same thing just even longer. Any idea why and how to work around it?