Re: How do you unsparsify a qcows2 file?
On Mon, 12 Dec 2022 06:55:15 -0800
ToddAndMargo via users wrote:
I wonder if qemu-ing convert will convert from
qcows2 to qcows2? I will see!
Yep, that's how I always sparsified my files before the virt-sparsify
tool existed. Write zeroes till you run out of space (thus making all
the free space on the disk blocks of zeroes), shut down the VM, and
qemu-img convert from qcow2 to qcow2. The destination file is much
smaller (usually) but has the same data in it. Rename the file and
now the VM takes less space.