diff --git a/prepare-ubuntu-18.04-template.sh b/prepare-ubuntu-18.04-template.sh
index 9bedd10..b4febe3 100755
--- a/prepare-ubuntu-18.04-template.sh
+++ b/prepare-ubuntu-18.04-template.sh
@@ -98,10 +98,6 @@ sudo sed -ri '/\sswap\s/s/^#?/#/' /etc/fstab
 # cleans out all of the cloud-init cache / logs - this is mainly cleaning out networking info
 sudo cloud-init clean --logs
 
-echo "Compacting drive..."
-dd if=/dev/zero of=EMPTY bs=1M > /dev/null
-rm -vf /root/EMPTY
-fstrim -av
 
 #cleanup shell history
 cat /dev/null > ~/.bash_history && history -c