[conspire] (forw) Re: (forw) Re: VirtualBox

[Rick Moen]

----- Forwarded message from Paul Zander <paulz at ieee.org> -----

Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2016 07:30:17 +0000 (UTC)
From: Paul Zander <paulz at ieee.org>
To: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
Subject: Re: [conspire] (forw) Re:  VirtualBox
Reply-To: Paul Zander <paulz at ieee.org>
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Regarding disk and partition units:The particular machine has a 1TB drive.  Originally C: 900 GB.  There were some "hidden" partitions, which seem to be standard windoz something.

I resized C: in anticipation of installing Linux.  It is now 250 GB  (not MB as in previous email, but there was a time when MB would have been the correct units.)  Only 50G is used.  This includes some programs I installed like LibreOffice and Firefox.  

Win8 includes a partition manager, but it has limited functionality.  Some files were originally located in the middle of the partition.  I had to install a 3rd party tool that would move those files when it shrank the partition.
BTW, after reducing the partition size, I did a backup using live Linux on USB.  First `dd if=/dev/zero ...` to write big files of all 0's.  Next pipe the entire partition through gzip.  The result was a file of about 45 GB.

So my next steps are 
 * to reduce C: to 90% used* download the p2v tool previously discussed* order external SSD.  

Regarding flash vs. SSD:Both are solid state memories based on NAND cells which have a limited number of write cycles before they degrade.  SSD has a enhancements to increase the life by 10X or more.  Now that think about it, only a few years ago people were questioning if solid state memories were reliable enough to replace spinning disks.  

----- End forwarded message -----