Download size of vhd with lots of free space

Question

Hi,

I'd like to copy a vhd from Azure to our on-premise environment, using CloudXplorer. This vhd is 30 GB in size, but only 5 GB is used. When I started to copy the vhd, it seemed as  though I had to download the full 30 GB, so I aborted the download.

Do I really have to download the free space as if it were 'real' data? And if so, is there a way (like using another tool) around this?

 Thanks for your time.

Answer 1

You can use Cloud Storage Studio (http://www.cerebrata.com/Products/CloudStorageStudio) or Azure Management Cmdlets (http://www.cerebrata.com/Products/AzureManagementCmdlets) from Cerebrata. It only downloads the pages which are occupied.

Disclosure: I work for Cerebrata.