I used dd booting from a USB stick to transfer a Windows install from hard drive to SSD this weekend - there are a number of steps that can be done beforehand t

I used dd booting from a USB stick to transfer a Windows install from hard drive to SSD this weekend - there are a number of steps that can be done beforehand to tighten up the size of the final output. These steps are also useful for virtual machines, but they tend to take quite a while... (1) Defrag - built-in / maybe SysInternals contig http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897428 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897428 (2) Defrag the page file - SysInternals PageDefrag http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897426 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897426 (3) Zero unused space - SysInternals SDelete http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897443.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897443.asp... (4) Shrink volume (if backup is filesystem-aware, and disk is one large volume) - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg309169.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg309169.aspx (5) After transfer, expand volume to fit target disk Pretty much any utility automating these steps is acquired by the various virtualization vendors, or heads directly to the enterprise market (kind of like how inexpensive screencast creation software always disappears!).