shrinking virtual machine disks (VMDK)

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This is one of those bookmarks I look for from time to time and, if not for Google, I'd never find...
Examples Using the VMware Virtual Disk Manager (bottom half of page) and
Shrinking Virtual Disks with VMware Virtual Disk Manager
The bottom line seems to be:

1. Power on virtual machine
2. delete temporary files and anything else you don't need
3. defrag from within OS (Win NT 5.0 & > allow "defrag c:")
4. Power down virtual machine
5. defrag from within vmware (either using the GUI, or the command line tool)
6. use vmware disk mount utility, e.g.
%programfiles%\vmware\vmware server\vmware-mount n: d:\path\disk.vmdk
(where N is an available drive letter)
7. use virtual disk manager to prep same, e.g.
%programfiles%\vmware\vmware server\vmware-vdiskmanager -p n:
8. use the disk mount utility to delete the mapping, e.g.
%programfiles%\VMware\VMware Server>vmware-mount /d n:
9. shrink by using
%bloody-path%\vmware-vdiskmanager -k d:\path\disk.vmdk

this stuff practically runs itself. :o)

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