Re: Copy large file to VPC 2007

On Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:18:13 -0700 (PDT), Klau <>
wrote:

>i'm having trouble in coping a 21GB file from the host to the virtual
>PC.It started to copy for 30 secs and then stopped, and nothing
>happened. Any one came across this issue ? My virtual PC does have
>54GB of free space.
>
>Any ideas ? Thanks in advance

Are you trying to copy with Shared Folders or standard windows
networking?
If Shared Folders, that's the reason, it can't handle heavy use like
that.

Use Windows network sharing for more robust copying.

--
Cheers,
Steve Jain, Virtual Machine MVP
http://vpc.essjae.com/

On Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:06:56 -0700 (PDT), Klau <>
wrote:

>On Jul 14, 1:35*pm, "Steve Jain [MVP]" <norepl...@-.essjae.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:18:13 -0700 (PDT), Klau <hiko...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >i'm having trouble in coping a 21GB file from the host to the virtual
>> >PC.It started to copy for 30 secs and then stopped, and nothing
>> >happened. Any one came across this issue ? My virtual PC does have
>> >54GB of free space.
>>
>> >Any ideas ? Thanks in advance
>>
>> Are you trying to copy with Shared Folders or standard windows
>> networking?
>> If Shared Folders, that's the reason, it can't handle heavy use like
>> that. *
>>
>> Use Windows network sharing for more robust copying.
>>
>> --
>> Cheers,
>> Steve Jain, Virtual Machine MVPhttp://vpc.essjae.com/
>
>Hi Steve,
>
>Thanks for your advice.
>Yeah i was using the shared folder option.
>Then i mapped a network drive to my host's D: drive and tried copying
>again and it's still very slow. Not much had been happening after more
>than 30 minutes. i think the status bar only shows 10% completion
>after 30 minutes. Is it because my network setting is incorrect or
>something ? Please advise again.
>

You say that your "virtual pc" has 54 Gb free space, I assume that you
are referring to the virtual machine (aka guest) that you have created
in Virtual PC (the application that handles the virtualization)....

If you have created the guest by walking through the "New Virtual
Machine" wizard, then you will have gotten a "dynamically expanding"
virtual disk for your guest. If this is so then the file that stores
the virtual disk on the host PC must expand in chunks of a few
MegaBytes as the copy process goes on. This can take some time,
especially if you have agressive AntiVirus software on your host.

Could you elaborate on:
- What type of virtual hard disk is the guest using (dynamically
expanding or fixed)?
- What is the size of the virtual disk (not the free space, the total
size)?
- Where is the virtual disk file (*.VHD) located on your host system?
Typically if you don't do something about it when creating the virtual
machine it will wind up somewhere below your "My Documents" folder,
which also means on your C: drive, which hits performance...
- What operating system did you install on the guest?
- What operating system are you using on the host?
- How much free disk space do you have on the host drive where the VHD
file is stored?
- How much physical RAM do you have on the host and how much did you
allocate to the guest?

All of the above influences the guest performance, especially when
making heavy disk use.

--
Bo Berglund

On Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:11:21 -0700 (PDT), Klau <>
wrote:

>On Jul 14, 9:47*pm, Bo Berglund <bo.bergl...@nomail.thankyou.com>
>wrote:
>> On Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:06:56 -0700 (PDT), Klau <hiko...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> >On Jul 14, 1:35*pm, "Steve Jain [MVP]" <norepl...@-.essjae.com> wrote:
>> >> On Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:18:13 -0700 (PDT), Klau <hiko...@gmail.com>
>> >> wrote:
>>
>> >> >i'm having trouble in coping a 21GB file from the host to the virtual
>> >> >PC.It started to copy for 30 secs and then stopped, and nothing
>> >> >happened. Any one came across this issue ? My virtual PC does have
>> >> >54GB of free space.
>>
>> >> >Any ideas ? Thanks in advance
>>
>> >> Are you trying to copy with Shared Folders or standard windows
>> >> networking?
>> >> If Shared Folders, that's the reason, it can't handle heavy use like
>> >> that. *
>>
>> >> Use Windows network sharing for more robust copying.
>>
>> >> --
>> >> Cheers,
>> >> Steve Jain, Virtual Machine MVPhttp://vpc.essjae.com/
>>
>> >Hi Steve,
>>
>> >Thanks for your advice.
>> >Yeah i was using the shared folder option.
>> >Then i mapped a network drive to my host's D: drive and tried copying
>> >again and it's still very slow. Not much had been happening after more
>> >than 30 minutes. i think the status bar only shows 10% completion
>> >after 30 minutes. Is it because my network setting is incorrect or
>> >something ? Please advise again.
>>
>> You say that your "virtual pc" has 54 Gb free space, I assume that you
>> are referring to the virtual machine (aka guest) that you have created
>> in Virtual PC (the application that handles the virtualization)....
>>
>> If you have created the guest by walking through the "New Virtual
>> Machine" wizard, then you will have gotten a "dynamically expanding"
>> virtual disk for your guest. If this is so then the file that stores
>> the virtual disk on the host PC must expand in chunks of a few
>> MegaBytes as the copy process goes on. This can take some time,
>> especially if you have agressive AntiVirus software on your host.
>>
>> Could you elaborate on:
>> - What type of virtual hard disk is the guest using (dynamically
>> expanding or fixed)?
>> - What is the size of the virtual disk (not the free space, the total
>> size)?
>> - Where is the virtual disk file (*.VHD) located on your host system?
>> Typically if you don't do something about it when creating the virtual
>> machine it will wind up somewhere below your "My Documents" folder,
>> which also means on your C: drive, which hits performance...
>> - What operating system did you install on the guest?
>> - What operating system are you using on the host?
>> - How much free disk space do you have on the host drive where the VHD
>> file is stored?
>> - How much physical RAM do you have on the host and how much did you
>> allocate to the guest?
>>
>> All of the above influences the guest performance, especially when
>> making heavy disk use.
>>
>> --
>> Bo Berglund- Hide quoted text -
>>
>> - Show quoted text -
>
>Hi Bo,
>Thanks for your advices, below is my VPC config :
>1. It is dynamically expanding
>2. Size of hard disk 1 = 12.7GB, Size of hard disk 2 = 30.57GB

Originally you said that you had 54 Gb free space, but this cannot
possibly be true if the virtual hard disks are 12.7 and 30.6 Gb each!
You cannot copy a 21 Gb file to a disk that is this small.

>3. Both VHD files are located in D: drive of the host, which has 78GB
>free space
Is the host drive D: a separate drive or is it a partition on the same
physical drive that also hosts C:?
If not a separate physical drive then you will see a performance hit
because both the host and the guest will use the same drive head and
there will be *lots* of disk activity in a copy operation like you are
doing...

>4. Guest OS is Windows 2003 server
>5. Host OS is Windows XP
>6. 78GB free space on host drive D:
>7. 4GB physical RAM on host, 2GB allocated to guest
>And both host and guest disks are NTFS
>
>regards,

--
Bo Berglund