System Restore - disk space

How to Change the System Restore Disk Space Usage Amount in Vista ​

   Information

By default Vista allocates 15% of your selected hard drive volume to storing System Restore points after installation. If System Restore is turned on much later, it may only allocate a minimum of 30% of the available free space instead. When the allocated space fills up with restore points, System Restore will delete the older restore points to make room for the new ones. System Restore needs at least 300 MB allocated to it to run, and will not run on a hard drive smaller than 1 GB. In the Vista Business and Ultimate versions, this area is also where backup copies of deleted or changed files are stored and made available through the Previous Versions feature (Shadow Copy). For more information about the Vssadmin command, see: Microsoft Technet: Vssadmin

   Note

System Restore needs to be turned on to be able to change it's storage size. To turn on System Restore and select what drives Vista is to create restore points for, see: How to Turn System Restore On or Off in Vista

   Warning

• If you shrink the available storage space for a selected drive, Vista will kick out the system restore points and backups on a first-in, first-out basis. The oldest restore point will be deleted as the new one is saved when out of available max space. This will, of course, leave you with fewer restore options.
• If you dual boot with Windows XP, then everytime you start in XP the System Restore Points and all except the most recent Complete PC Backup files in Vista get deleted. For how, see: How to Stop System Restore Points from being Deleted in Vista when Dual Booting with XP

   Tip

If you just want to free up some space, then you can run Disk Cleanup instead.

STEP ONE

How to See the Current Allocated System Restore Size

1. Open a elevated command prompt.​

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2. If prompted by UAC, click on Continue.​

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3. In the elevated command prompt, type vssadmin list shadowstorage and press Enter. (See screenshots below)​

NOTE: This will give your the details on the Used, Allocated, and Maximum spaces of Shadow Copies for the available disks that you selected to have restore points created for in step 6 here: How to Turn System Restore On or Off in Vista. The left screenshot is for just one drive selected, and the right screenshot is for two drives (C & D ) selected.​

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Result	Description
Used	This is the amount currently used on the hard disk.
Allocated	This is the amount that it has reserved from the hard disk at this time.
Maximum	This is the maximum amount it will allocate and use from the hard disk.

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STEP TWO

How to Change the Maximum System Restore Size

NOTE: If you disable or enable System Restore for a selected drive, the original default values will be set back and the restore points will be deleted. For how, see: How to Disable or Enable System Restore in Vista.

1. In same elevated command prompt window from above, type for EX:​

WARNING: If you change the MAX size to a smaller size than the current Used size shown in METHOD ONE above, then the older restore points will be deleted to adjust to the new size. Nothing will happen to the restore points if you make the MAX size larger than the current Used size shown in METHOD ONE above.​

A) For the listed C: drive, type the command below and press Enter.​

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vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /Maxsize=[B][COLOR=red]3GB[/COLOR][/B]

B) For the listed D: drive, type the command below and press Enter.​

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vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=D: /On=D: /Maxsize=[B][COLOR=red]3GB[/COLOR][/B]

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   Note

See the screenshots below step 5 in OPTION ONE above under the Shadow Copy Storage association line for each drive listed.​

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Command	Description
/For=	The For volume: listed. (Ex: C or D above)
/On=	The Shadow Copy Storage volume: listed. (Ex: C or D above)
/Maxsize=	What you want to limit the maximum storage size of Shadow Copies (restore points) to. For example, # + GB or MB (Ex: 3GB or 3MB) This must be 1MB or larger.

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2. You will get a Successfully resized the shadow copy storage association message.​

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3. If not, repeat step 1.​

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4. If yes, then check with STEP ONE above to confirm the change for the selected drive.​

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5. Close the elevated command prompt when done.​

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That's it,
Shawn



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Related Tutorials

---

• How to Create a System Restore Shortcut in Vista
• How to Create a Create System Restore Point Shortcut in Vista
• How to Create a System Restore Point in Vista
• How to Undo the Last System Restore in Vista
• How to Do a System Restore in Vista
• How to Turn System Restore On or Off in Vista
• How to Use Disk Cleanup in Vista
• How to Restore Previous Versions of a File and Folder in Vista
• How to Stop System Restore Points from being Deleted in Vista when Dual Booting with XP
• How to Change the Automatic System Restore Point Settings in Vista Task Scheduler
• How to Enable or Disable Create Vista System Restore Point when New Device Driver is Installed
• How to Enable or Disable Create Vista System Restore Point when a Application is Installed

 

[bluesinjid]

Hi When i ran this I got these stats

Used .... Storage Space: 42gig
Allocated.....: 43gig
Maximum.....: 54 gigs


What would be a good amount to reduce this to?

 

[SIW2]

Hi bluesinjid,

It depends how many restore points you want to keep.

Many are happy with 3gb.

If you are not sure, try 10gb first and see how many restore points are still listed.

If you like , you can then change it to a smaller amount.

Hope it helps.

 

[bluesinjid]

Thanks I tried 7 gigs and holy Sh**!! You saved me some 40 gigs of HD space! I really love your tuts here! :0


Cheers

 

[hahanotfunny]

I looked at the 1st page of this thread and immediately thought I had the same problem. My hard drive is 160 gigs (the C disk in Computer says 138). So I went to Command Prompt and checked out my System Restore disk space and the Max was 20.842 gigs. Unlike some of the earlier posts, which had the Used Shadow Storage around 10% of the max space, mine had a Used Shadow Storage space of 19.711 gigs.

1. Why is my used space so large and so close to the Max space?


PS. The C disk in the Computer says I have 8.94 gigs left out of 138 gigs.


2. I don't really know much about computers, but I think this problem is related to why my disk space doesn't add up. I go into C: and highlight everything, and then click Properties. It says 103 gigs. Even with hidden files showing it says only 105 gigs. But the Computer says my C: is 138 gigs. Even with the 8.94 of free space (as I stated above), that leaves a difference of 24 gigs. Why is this 24 gigs gone; is it related to the System Restore storage space?

 

[Brink]

Hello hahanotfunny, and welcome to Vista Forums.

By default Vista allocates 15% of your hard drive's size to storing System Restore points.

Your hard drive size is different because they advertise it using the higher looking decimal number when the actual size is the smaller binary number. This would be why your drive is actually smaller than 160 GB.

Drive Size | Approximate Total Bytes | Decimal Capacity (bytes/1,000,000,000) | Approximate Binary Capacity (bytes/1,073,724,841)
160 GB|160,000,000,000|160 GB|149.01 GB

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[whs]

Dj, you have plenty of space on your disk. Unless you really need the extra space now, I would not reduce the shadowstorage. In the event of a serious problem, you never know how far back you have to go to restore the system. Very often problems do not show up immediately and may require to go back a couple of weeks.
The amount of shadowstorage used is also a function on how much and how often your system is being changed with new installations or updates. With every install, a shadow is being written plus normally one per day. At about 1GB per shadow, that can eat up the shadowstorage pretty fast.
In addition to the recovery with the shadows I recommend to use an imaging program such as Norton Ghost, Acronis or Macrium. I use Ghost and write a system image to an external disk once a week on Sunday. That allows me to go back to my system state of last Sunday at any day of the week. For the "in between" days, I allocated 30GBs of shadowstorage so that I can also go back to Tuesday or Thursday and don't have to lose 3,4,5 days of work.
If you are interested in that approach, you might want to read this: Ghosting approaches - summary because of popular demand « How-To Geek Forums

 

[hahanotfunny]

Ummm, why is my computer using so much of the max space allowed for Shadow Storage? And if I wanted to decrease the max space allowed, what is a good size?

(How much space does each restore point take up?)

 

[whs]

A good size is as much as you can afford. Unless you need the space urgently, I would not reduce it. Each shadow needs about 1GB and figure 10 to 15 shadows per week (one each day and one with each program or update installation). I keep 30GBs on my disks, but I also make a system image once a week (see my post above).

 

[KeYoung59]

I chaged it from 137GB to 30GB?

I was always wondering why my storage was being used so fast.

Should it be more or less? Thanks for the great post

 

[Brink]

Hello Kevin,

I would say that it depends on how many restore points that you want to have stored. On average each restore point is 1 to 2 GB, and they will not stay stored longer than 90 days. 137 GB is excessive, but 37 is ok if you have the extra hard drive space and want to have extra restore points.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[GradeAbra]

Wow how much total disk space do you have? Why would you spend 137GB on system restore alone? Even 30 GB is too big i think.. I reduce mine to 3 extent it to 5 recently...

 

[yvescy]

Hi,

First of all this thread has helped a lot.
I have been able to set my Max Shadow Storage to 50GB from about 112GB (My HDD 75ogb)

Anyways... now that I have set my max to 50gb (which I did a few weeks ago)...
my used and allocated space is now larger than the max?

Used: 57+GB
Allocated: 59+GB
Max: 50GB

Why is it like this? :/
Any help is appreciated, thanx.

 

[whs]

Djlevel9, I would not "fix" anything. The more restore points you have, the safer you are. And since you have an abundance of disk space, the 68GBs should not put you into a bind. That will give you restore points for about 6 weeks back (depending on the number of installs).

 

[IvyGold]

This worked like a charm! Dropping by to say thanks!

 

[Brink]

You're welcome IvyGold. I'm happy to hear that you got it sorted.

 

[abdulfatha]

Thanks brink for the wonderful idea on how to reduce the system restore disk space...!!
It helped a lot...!!
your posts are amazing and very helpful...!!!

Thank u brink..!!

 

[Brink]

You're most welcome Abdulfatha.

 

[JoeShMoe]

I need help... I wrote all that was need on Command Prompt (the vssadmin stuff)

and this popped up (oh yea... i'm on the 'true' admin account; turned on at the command prompt)

vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool <C> Copyright 2001-2005 Microsoft Corp.

Error: The specified volume shadow copy storage association was not found.

Now what?

I allocated and this is what I have:

-used shadow copy storage space: 7.853 GB
-allocated shadow copy storage space: 8.106 GB
-maximum shadow copy storage space: 9.884 GB

when I try to get it down to 3GB it's not letting me and that message above pops up help...

 

[Brink]

Hello Joe,

Do you have system restore turned on for the C: disk?

If so, you might see if running a sfc /scannow command may be able to fix it for you.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[JoeShMoe]

turn off the system restore and gained back a WHOLE lot of memory!! That's cool...