This installation includes qemu-img , the command-line tool for creating and managing .qcow2 images.
A default Windows installation is bloated. Run these inside the guest:
sudo qemu-system-x86_64 \ -enable-kvm \ -m 4G \ -smp 4 \ -cpu host \ -drive file=win10.qcow2,if=virtio \ -drive file=Win10_22H2.iso,media=cdrom \ -drive file=virtio-win.iso,media=cdrom \ -cdrom Win10_22H2.iso \ -boot menu=on
qemu-img create -f qcow2 windows10.qcow2 64G
| Task | Command/Tool | |------|---------------| | Create | qemu-img create -f qcow2 Windows10.qcow2 50G | | Boot | QEMU + -drive file=... | | Resize | qemu-img resize + Windows Disk Management | | Convert from VMDK/VHDX | qemu-img convert | | Snapshot | qemu-img snapshot -c NAME Windows10.qcow2 |
In standard Linux KVM environments, these images are usually found in /var/lib/libvirt/images Proxmox Support Forum Managing Windows 10.qcow2 Images
To resize the partition after expanding the QCOW2:
Open services.msc , locate Windows Search , change the startup type to Disabled , and stop the service.
To create a fresh image, you first define the storage and then run the installation: Windows 10 on KVM
This allows multiple VMs to share a clean Windows 10 install.