diff --git a/toolkit/tools/pkg/imagecustomizerlib/customizepartitionsfilecopy.go b/toolkit/tools/pkg/imagecustomizerlib/customizepartitionsfilecopy.go
index 0c3562f1f..b3d3d6ab4 100644
--- a/toolkit/tools/pkg/imagecustomizerlib/customizepartitionsfilecopy.go
+++ b/toolkit/tools/pkg/imagecustomizerlib/customizepartitionsfilecopy.go
@@ -68,7 +68,7 @@ func copyPartitionFilesWithOptions(sourceRoot, targetRoot string, noClobber bool
 	// `-a` ensures unix permissions, extended attributes (including SELinux), and sub-directories (-r) are copied.
 	// `--no-dereference` ensures that symlinks are copied as symlinks.
 	copyArgs := []string{
-		"--verbose", "-a", "--no-dereference", "--sparse", "always",
+		"--verbose", "-a", "--no-dereference",
 		sourceRoot, targetRoot,
 	}
 
diff --git a/toolkit/tools/pkg/imagecustomizerlib/customizeverity_test.go b/toolkit/tools/pkg/imagecustomizerlib/customizeverity_test.go
index ae47b23c3..48075e043 100644
--- a/toolkit/tools/pkg/imagecustomizerlib/customizeverity_test.go
+++ b/toolkit/tools/pkg/imagecustomizerlib/customizeverity_test.go
@@ -239,7 +239,7 @@ func testCustomizeImageVerityCosiExtractHelper(t *testing.T, testName string, ba
 	// implementation details, and randomness. So, just enforce that the final size is below an arbitary value. Values
 	// were picked by observing values seen during test and adding a good buffer.
 	assert.Greater(t, int64(150*diskutils.MiB), bootStat.Size())
-	assert.Greater(t, int64(675*diskutils.MiB), rootStat.Size())
+	assert.Greater(t, int64(750*diskutils.MiB), rootStat.Size())
 	assert.Greater(t, int64(10*diskutils.MiB), hashStat.Size())
 	assert.Greater(t, int64(150*diskutils.MiB), varStat.Size())