Reduce System Restore's Disk Usage in Vista
The System Restore feature in Windows Vista is very important to keep enabled, what with all the problems Vista users are having with compatibility. Even so, the disk usage can get out of hand if you install a large amount of software.
The utility to change the settings is a command line utility called vssadmin. You'll have to open a command prompt in administrator mode by entering cmd into the start menu and hitting Ctrl+Shift+Enter, or right-clicking the command prompt and selecting Run as Administrator.
Show Allocated System Restore Size
Type in the following command into the prompt:
vssadmin list shadowstorage
As you can see in the screenshot, System Restore is taking up 2.2 GB on my system.. and I just reinstalled!
Changing the Allocated System Restore Size
To change the maximum size on the disk that System Restore will use, you will need to type in the following command:
vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /Maxsize=3GB
You can change the /for and /on to match the drive that System Restore is enabled on, and you can set a different size for the max size. I chose 3GB for the sake of this example, but you could also limit it to 500MB or something else if you wanted to.
If you have plenty of disk space, I'd recommend leaving the values alone, but if you are running low on space, this is a quick way to help the problem.
Awesome awesome tip. Wow, I'd been looking for a way to do this from the command line as part of a script I run when installing Windows a new.
My Vista's System Restore is using 31 GBs (max 35). This is more than 10 times your example.
My already underpowered 238 GB HDrive seems to be losing another GB every couple days; and yes; I have had to use Restore, so disabling is not in the cards.
Just curious - why the big discrepancy and what can I do to save disc space? Thanks, Wayne.
Thank you for this page - I have a new Vista Home Premium system which has a huge 500GB disk of which, after only a few weeks, 68GB was being used as system restore - but was inoperable as various error messages would appear about corrupt snapshots and incompatible serializing packages and Vista could not find any disk at all to restore to or from!
Having reduced the max size of the shadow storage to only 10GB suddenly Vista is happy with no errors and instant access to system restore.
Thanks again!
My Vista will not let me change Max Size. After entering everything exact, allowing for case sensitivity, and trying various sizes, I get "Invalid Request".
However, since it's now at maximum capacity - 35 out of 238 GBs - I suppose I should move on.
Thanks, Wayne
If anyone is still following this thread and hasn't been able to reduce SR, the following might help.
In my failed attempts I had System Restore on. While SR was off I was able to reduce to 10 GB max from 35 GB. Whether this made the difference, I don't know. Good luck. Wayne
Thanks for the update… that's a good tip to know!
Great Tip! Had over 95GB of space tied up. HD was almost full! Turned off SR, then reenabled. Tons of space now. But I had no restore points… This, I think, had something to do with why I got an error at first. No restore points… Created one and this tip worked wonderfully. In contrast, with no restore points, I got an error.
Your post is a bit of a mystery. Since SR uses only 15% max by default, your HD could never be "almost full" because of it.
My advice was to disable SR, then do the above mentioned Resize, then reenable SR, in that order.
You seem to have had success but it wasn't from my tip.
What did you reduce Max size to, just for curiousity sake. And you didn't have to create a restore point. This was done automatically as soon as you reenabled SR. Thanks, Wayne
How can I so this process in Windows XP??
The command on the website is incorrect at least for Vista computers it should read:
"vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=c: /for=c: /maxsize 3gb" Also make sure you have turned on restore points and that there are some already out there.
Frank is correct. My earlier comments should be disregarded in case they misled anyone.
SR should be on.
I have since further reduced to 5 GBs and find my earliest restore point is about 5 days ago. Wayne
Is there any way to keep my original restore point from being overwritten (Vista Home Basic)? I haven't discovered one….Thanks yall. W
I too had to resize shadowstorage.I have Vista Premium and tried the above mentioned commands but with no success.What eventually worked was;
vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=3000mb
I had to pay attention to case,spaces before / ,= after MaxSize and instead of 3gb I had to enter 3000mb.
This is what worked for me.If anyone has an explanation for the difference in what I did and what was previously suggested,please, be my guest.
Paul - I discovered the same thing. In my case I omitted a few spaces by accident and had to keep trying till I figured it out.
Are you sure 3000mb will be enough?
Mine is set for 5 GBs and I only have about a 4 day window to catch a problem and restore if necessary. You might want to check your earliest restore point? Is it enough protection?
Still can't find my missing GB's and I don't need/use restore points… I have a Thinkpad w/Vista factory installed. Recently I saw that I have 78GB used of 105GB on my C drive. What the ? I accounted for 43GB in my file system using Disktective but cant find the missing 35GB's… that's a lot more than 15% for Shadow Copy. The analysis tools show folders RRbackups, Documents and Settings, and System Volume Information all without file sizes or space usage info.
How can I see how big these folders are or where else something may be gorging on 35GB's of my data…?
ok i tried this and im getting the message that i dont have the correct permissions to run this command, this is on a brand new out the box packard bell, any ideas?
Any tips on how to reduce the size of he files you're backing up with restore point? trying to help a family member who has got almost 10gb allocated and it's still not enough to avoid errors. I've not worked with vista before so I've tried messing with the restore point settings but haven't gotten anywhere.
Just wanted to say thanks for the how-to. It helped me reign-in my 191 GB shadow copy!
Thanks for the tip. I have 2 hard drives, primary 120gb and secondary 150gb. All of these dumb system restore points had wiped out all but 30 gb of my backup hard drive. I just did all the steps now so hopefully this works successfully.
Thanks for the info. I was perplexed by a significant chunk of missing space on my 1TB drive that I couldn't account for … it turns out that my shadow copy storage was 140GB. I'll leave it alone for now but its nice to know where the space is being used (I just hate it when the numbers don't add up!)
Great tips……….I have changed mine successfully!
Great tips - I got mine changed from 50gb down to 3gb successfully!
"You can change the /for and /on to match the drive that System Restore is enabled on,"
Where /for is my main operating system drive, can I adjust /on to another partition used for data ? I find that whenever I do a disk analysis it's always the system restore files which are highly fragmeneted and are spread about the entire disk.
This worked great for me,
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=c: /on=c: /maxsize=3.00GB
Thanks
Bruce
Everyone should not get too excited about how low they can reduce SR usage. How many days protection do you have? That's the main thing.
If you go below, say, 10GBs, you may have only a few days of points, less if you have had many events which caused points to be created.
Monitor your SR over a number of days after you use this tip to see what I mean. It varies greatly from day to day. Are you adequately protected?
i turned off my restore and theres still about 13 gigs of unknown space used on my hard drive.how do i find and delete this.
Hi All,
I had a Sony vaio laptop with Windows Vista Home Basic Version.
It come with one partition C drive.Defaultly it was given with one drive.
I want to partion it into other drives.I want d,e Drives for m,y own files.
How can i do partion to my hard disk without formatting the system?
Worked like a charm…thx…
@DMT, you might want to check C:\ and see what you are taking up with hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys — that will probably account for the remaining 13 gigs
hi all
just wanted to address what Fat Gooner said, you have to run it as administrator. What you do is when you open up start to run cmd (command prompt) instead of pressing enter you press Ctrl+Shift+Enter, then you will get a popup which is the User Account Control dialog, just click yes and it would running as admin.
Cheers
Wow…great to find this, just to add to the post above, you can also right click on "cmd" and select
"Run as Administrator" even if you are on your admin acct……you must do this.
also, I set mine to 3GB about a month ago and it only kept 2 restore points…..not a good idea! and certainly nowhere near 15%. I reset for 37GB, about 11% for me. I have also noticed that it seems to use about 1gig per RP,
I am going to go set the triggers now…lol if I can find the "how to" again.