Change the amount of space used by System Restore
Mon, 03/12/2007 - 15:19 — Ciprian
System Restore is a very useful feature of Windows Vista but it has one main drawback. After running for a few weeks, it can use a lot of your hard disk space. With the default settings turned on, System Restore might use up to 15 percent of the space on each disk. For example, if you have a 250GB hard disk drive, System Restore might end up using 37,5GB of it. That is a lot of space.
What can we do to limit the amount of space used by System Restore? In Windows XP making this kind of configuration was pretty easy. You had a slider in the System Properties window that you could move left or right to the desired percentage. Unfortunately this slider was removed from Windows Vista.
In order to configure the amount of space used by System Restore, you need to use a tool called Volume Shadow Copy Administrative Command-Line Tool (or vssadmin.exe).
To access vssadmin.exe we will have to open the command prompt with administrative rights. In order to do that, type "cmd" or "command" in the Start Menu search field. The first result should be cmd.exe or the Command Prompt. If you have UAC turned on, right click on it and select Run as administrator.
The Command Prompt will open. The Volume Shadow Copy Service offers several configuration option. Type vssadmin /? and press Enter to see the list of available options.
If you want to know how much space has been allocated and the maximum amount of space that can be used by System Restore, type vssadmin list shadowstorage and then hit the Enter key.
If you want to change the amount of space used by System Restore, you should use the following command:
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=[drive letter]: /For=[drive letter]: /Maxsize=[maximum size]
MaxSizeSpec must be 300MB or greater and accepts the following suffixes: KB (for kilobytes), MB (for megabytes), GB (for gigabytes), TB (for terabytes), PB (for petabytes) and EB (for exabytes). If a suffix is not supplied, MaxSizeSpec is in bytes. If MaxSizeSpec is not specified, then there will be no limit to the amount of space it may use.
For example, if you want System Restore to use a maximum of 1GB of space for the restore points on drive "C:", you should type the following:
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /On=C: /For=C: /Maxsize=1GB
The maximum space used by System Restore has now been resized.
Related articles:
System Restore
Change the System Restore Frequency with CSRF v1.0.0.0
How to disable or enable System Restore
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Comments
No
All you are doing is limiting the amount of space that System Restore uses.
The only thing you should not do is make it too small, as then you will not have any restore points. 300mb is the absolute minimum that it requires, so a size of 1gb or higher will allow you to have several restore points.
Excellent article!
I wanted System Restore to use MORE of my free hard disk space, to see if it would save more restore Points before points dropped off the bottom of the list. So I followed this tutorial, copying and pasting the line "vssadmin resize shadowstorage /On=C: /For=C: /Maxsize=1GB" and then changing the 1GB to 15GB - and lo and behold it worked a treat!
If this still does not allow enough Restore Points to be saved, I will run "vssadmin list shadowstorage" and "vssadmin resize shadowstorage /On=C: /For=C: /Maxsize=1GB"again and increase the size to 20GB or more!
Thank you so much Vista4beginners for this excellent tutorial!
Error Message
I used the administrator account yet I received an error message like this...
"you don't have the permissions to run this command. please run the window that has elevated administration privilege."
what do i do?
Thanks
At last I can stop System Restore eating up 100gb of space. My C:/ drive storage space was showing as UNBOUNDED, which would leave system restore use up all the space. I have now made it 30GB, which will leave me with plenty of restore points and also plenty of space on my C:/ drive.
Many thanks for an easy guide.
system restore space
Hi
I followed your instructions and the last panel shoiws:
used shadow copy storeage space: 1.051 GB
allotted shadow copy storage space: 3.202 GB
Maxinun shadow copy storage space: 15.513 GB
Do you think I need to change anything? I am still not running a normal restore. I am considering running a full factory restore. I have a DVD that has the program on it. I did this once before and it took me several hours to get all the up dates installed so you can see why I use that as a last resort. Thanks for the help. Bob
Thanx
Thanks for the great tutorial..I have been searching for the reason behind my drive space usage problem..
I use Acronis True Image for weekly image backups as my main restore feature and before this tutorial my backups were huge..( almost 100 GB each ) Now I seem to have freed about 98 GB of hard drive space and hopefully my backups will be much smaller..
Thanks again for the help!!!
Good Info but...
Thanks for the informative article. If only it were useful info...
What are your recommendations for the "correct" size of the system restore space? It's good to know HOW to change it, but it might great to know WHAT to change it to.
Thanks.
184Gb restored!
Wow! So glad I found this. I've recently trialled and removed a few program suites, and suddenly found my disk space disappearing. I deleted or archived some data, but it still kept disappearing. I was advised to turn off System Restore before checking for viruses, and that released 184.3Gb! And I thought SWMBO and the kids were saving lots of data...
When I ran vssadmin, it reported the maximum space as "UNBOUNDED", which is why it kept on growing. So I cut and pasted the command line and it worked fine
MANY THANKS!
Works Great!
I've been rooting around in the interface of Vista for months trying to figure out a way to do this, and I'm no stranger to the command line, I just never knew about the command until now. Thanks for this! Windows was sucking up 7-9G every few days, then I'd clean it and regain the space only to find it used up again. We only have an 80G drive and store lots of pics and video, so this really helped a lot. I just hope it really does work.
No items found that satisfy the query.?
when i tiype in the instuctions this is what im getting
C:\Windows\system32>vssadmin /?
vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2005 Microsoft Corp.
---- Commands Supported ----
List Providers - List registered volume shadow copy providers
List Shadows - List existing volume shadow copies
List ShadowStorage - List volume shadow copy storage associations
List Volumes - List volumes eligible for shadow copies
List Writers - List subscribed volume shadow copy writers
Resize ShadowStorage - Resize a volume shadow copy storage association
C:\Windows\system32>vssadmin list shadowstorage
vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2005 Microsoft Corp.
No items found that satisfy the query.
C:\Windows\system32>
could this be because i have a partitioned drive? there is 55gb missing and i think its this system restore
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