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How to Compact Virtual Hard Disk

These days most of us using virtual storage drives for a server, most of the time these virtual storage disks are configured dynamically, so it grows as we use it, but does not shrink when you delete data unless you do compact. If you are using Hyper-V servers, it’s very easy to do, other hypervisors also offer similar compacting, you may just have to look around.

Here is screenshot of before compacting drive:

To compact in Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor:

Open the Hyper-V Manager
Select the VM
Right-click on VM, click Settings
Select the Hard Drive that you want to compact, then click Edit
It will give you the location of the Disk and warning, please make sure you have a good backup, just in case something goes wrong
Click Next

If you only see Expand option, that means your VM is running, you can’t Compact
Click Next

Summary of Disk, click Finish and it will start compacting, time it takes to compact are depends on speed of drive and how much data you have deleted.

This is what it looks like after compacting, the size will vary depends on how much of your data being deleted.

After Compacting:

That’s it, if you don’t get the drive space back, make sure to do the Drive Optimization first then re-do the compacting

To drive Optimize:

Login into server and right click on the drive select Properties

Click on Tools tab
Click on Optimize

Then select the drive if you have more then one and click on Optimize


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Share files with encryption via Firefox send

Sharing files is very common these days, but is it safe and secure? Firefox has been testing for a while and now it’s an officially released a couple of days ago at https://blog.mozilla.org, it’s free up to 1GB without setting up an account, with a free account it gives 2.5 GB. It’s very easy to use for anyone who is looking to share big files that can’t be sent via email. Best thing is it doesn’t stay on the server forever, so no need to worry about, your data out there, it automatically generates a link and you choose how long it should stay shared then deletes it automatically. It’s a free encrypted file transfer service that allows users to safely and you can use any browser, you can use Firebox browser.

Here is how it looks like, all you have to do is go to URL: https://send.firefox.com Then drag and drop files or click on the select file to upload

Once the file is uploaded, you will get default option for your files to be Expires after 1 download or 1 day. You can change to up to 100 download or 7 days. Also, you get an option to put a password as well. Then click on Upload to generate the link.

It will generate the link to be share, which you can copy and paste it to your email whom you want to share your files with.

Based on your selection, you will see options, when your files will be expires. You will have option to copy link in case you forget to copy.

That’s it, very easy secure way to share big files, you can read about Firefox Privacy Notice for more info your secure files share via Firefox.