For Windows 7, which requires at least 16-20GB of base space, thin provisioning is a lifesaver. Your windows 7 qcow2 file might appear to be 80GB, but if you only installed the OS and one app, it might only consume 12GB on your Linux server.
For legacy Windows 7, cache=none with aio=native offers good balance and safety. windows 7 qcow2 file
: You can use one "golden" Windows 7 image as a read-only base and create multiple Windows 7 qcow2 file For Windows 7, which
One of the biggest hurdles when running Windows 7 on modern KVM/QEMU hypervisors is driver support. Modern virtualization uses drivers for disk and network performance. Use VirtIO drivers : Raw IDE emulation is slow
viostor (SCSI) and netkvm.-drive file=win7.qcow2,format=qcow2,if=virtio,cache=writeback
qemu-img create -f qcow2 -o preallocation=metadata win7.qcow2 40G