Vista Tutorial - Saving system restore points on another drive?

Is it possible to change the drive where system restore points are saved by
Vista?

I have a small but very fast C: drive, where windows and programs are
installed, and a larger but slower E: drive, where I store data and files.
Can I get Vista to save the system restore points for C: on E:, where I have
space to spare?

Thanks in advance, and my apologies if this is a dumb question - am a
complete Vista newbie.

A system restore file (System Volume Information) must be on the
drive/partition it is protecting. Each drive/partition will have it's own
System Volume Information folder for recovery of that particular
partition/drive. This is the way the O/S is designed, so no you cannot move
from C to another drive.

--
All the best,
SG

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"BigBadB" <BigBadB@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:B1D52BE4-2870-4F49-A6CF-27DAC599F7F1@xxxxxx

SG is correct, System Restore can't be moved - but there are a number of things you can do that will reduce the amount of space that it consumes (short of disabling it entirely which I do not recommend):

Probably the single best thing to do is move all of your personal user data files off of your system drive (Documents, Music, Videos, Pictures, etc.) to give System Restore less stuff to track - see this tutorial (Personal User Shell Folders - Move Location). Obviously you'll want to make sure you implement an alternate backup strategy for these files if you remove them from System Restore's management).

You can also use the Vista Disk Cleanup tool to reclaim some space - on the "More Options" tab you will find a button that will allow you to cleanup your System Restore/Shadow Copy history - see (SP1 Disk Cleanup Tool). This will remove all but the last restore point created, but if your system is currently in a stable state there shouldn't be problem in removing the historical data.

If this is an "always on" desktop PC, you might also want to consider disabling hibernation to get a sizable chunk of your system drive back - see (Hopelessly Aporetic - Disabling Hibernation in Vista).

And last but not least - you can manually adjust the maximum amount of space that is allocated for System Restore/Shadow Copy. Vista defaults this allocation to 15% of the size of the partititon (on a 250GB drive this would be in the neighborhood of 37.5 gigs). If that's too big a chunk for your comfort, you can reduce this by running the following from an administrative command prompt:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=10GB

10GB is just an example here, your mileage may vary depending on the size of your drive partition and how full it already is, so you may wish to adjust that value up or down to better suit your needs - see (Change the amount of space used by System Restore | Windows Vista for Beginners).

Hope this helps.
MP

Is it possible to use a symlink/junction to store the folder on another drive?

So that the restore folder on C: would appear to be on C: but actually link to another drive?

On Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:05:43 -0600, KITH <guest@xxxxxx-email.com>
wrote:
Never heard of that, so I'd say no.

Do you have space problems?

PJ White

No, not necessarily space problems.

I am planning an installation of vista on a 32gb ssd that has limited random write performance.

If I can move the system restore folder to another drive I can save space on the 32gb drive but perhaps more importantly limits random writes to it.

According to the Vista Help under System Restore, it does not save any info in the "Documents and Settings" folders so it shouldn't really be tracking anything there - unless I am missing something.

I do agree that moving your "Documents and Settings" folder(s) to a separate physical disk will speed things up quite a bit but not for the reason of anything to do with System Restore. Rather, it is from 2 things:

1. Keeping your OS drive smaller - with really only OS related stuff
2. Having 1 physical drive contain your OS, your Program Files, and your Documents and Settings (personal data).

IMHO, disk IO is the singlemost bottleneck in todays computers. Most of the newer ones come with a more than fast enough processor for the average user and a sufficient amount of RAM (at least 2GB). In a perfect world, you should have your OS, Program Files, and Documents and Settings (personal data) each on their own physical disk if possible. This is the most "bang for your buck" short of having a RAID configuration.

Just my $.02