After a machine of mine became consumed by a project, I have been building a new set of disks latest for my use during new projects. I always build my VPCs using differencing disk. For those of you new to this concept, it allows you to build a disk off of a parent disk and all changes at that point will go to the new disk. With the environment changing on us constantly with different releases of products, it is critical for you to get your project up quick. Here is my example:
As you can see, I am using sub-folders for all disks that build off of a parent. So I have a disk for Windows XP SP2, then another built off of that for Office 2003. Then SQL Server 2000, Visual Studio 2005, Core developer tools, and ASP.NET Web Projects. When Office 2007 releases, I can create a sub-folder in the Windows XP 2003 directory and place a disk there. When Vista comes out, I will create a new core folder. When I need SQL Server 2005, I will build that off of the Office 2003 disk. You can see the power of these disks.
Big Tip #1! - Building one project file that merges all disks
When I am ready to start a project, I build another difference disk on top of the disk you want to build from. So if I had a new client that needed VS 2005, Office 2003, SQL 2000, and XP for a development environment, I would go to the lowest subfolder I wanted and choose that disk as the parent to the new disk. After this is done, run the Virtual Disk Wizard and edit the new disk. Choose to merge disks to new disk option and this will generate one disk for all the difference disks you have in your chain. Now your project is separated from your build disk tree and you can place all the other disks on a dedicated hard drive just for building new projects.
Big Tip #2! - Mark as Read-Only
Just a friendly reminded to always mark your parent disks as Read-Only, that way you know you can't change them because someone else depends on their state.
Big Tip #3! - Build only what you need
Don't build all at once, only build what you need and always separate major products. If you aren't using SQL Server 2005 yet, don't build it.
Big Tip #4 - Delete .vmc files of anything you are using as a parent
Don't tempt yourself to change a disk that is someone else's parent, just remove the settings file.
Final Tip! - New difference disks for updates
When building a SharePoint 2007 disks, I create a new one for the tech refresh that was a sub of the beta 2 disk. This saved me so much time after I tried the upgrade 4 different times. I would just delete the new TR disk and create another one and try again.