I am using SUSE Linux on a Virtual Machine through VMWare Workstation.
This morning, I zipped up a copy of the folder containing my VM (.vmx, .vmdk, .vmem, single snapshot and all) and sent it to my brother. The folder was initially 14gigs, and was compressed down to 10gigs. This process took nearly 45mins.
I continued doing some work, deleted maybe 200MB off the VM while cleaning it up (200GB is a generous estimate - I was writing code and refactored a bunch). I then zipped this up using 7-zip, with the same settings as before.
This time it took 15mins and compressed it down to 5gigs.
What possible reason is there for this? Same PC, same settings, assigned a high priority to 7zip in both cases. I assumed something was awry and waited fifteen mins just to verify the 5gig version wasn't broken. It wasn't, functioned perfectly.
Any ideas?