100Gb of uber-hidden stuff on C:

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

Am running three 750GB drives that have 698GB free after formatting (into
"vanilla" NTFS without RAID), but only C: appears to be effected by this
problem.

After initial Vista Ultimate and applications installation onto C: it had
670GB free, but that has now steadily dropped to 565GB (after clean-up,
defrag, etc.). Most of the utilities I have tried show only 32GB on C: as
even being "occupied." Disk Management (in the Vista Administrative Tools
menu) is the exception, it shows 133GB as being used but provides no clue
what that comprises.

Anybody have suggestions what is going on?
 
Ray said:
Am running three 750GB drives that have 698GB free after formatting (into
"vanilla" NTFS without RAID), but only C: appears to be effected by this
problem.

After initial Vista Ultimate and applications installation onto C: it had
670GB free, but that has now steadily dropped to 565GB (after clean-up,
defrag, etc.). Most of the utilities I have tried show only 32GB on C: as
even being "occupied." Disk Management (in the Vista Administrative Tools
menu) is the exception, it shows 133GB as being used but provides no clue
what that comprises.

Anybody have suggestions what is going on?
Click to expand...

It's most likely Vista's Shadow Copy.

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Windo...dd8b-4ae7-80fa-b9d77cd8104d1033.mspx?mfr=true

It keeps copies of all of your folders and files in case you want to revert
to an older copy.

Thank God we can cut it off.

squishy
 
Squishy

The Volume Shadow Copy can be important in preventing data loss. I would
recommend that you do not disable it.

If you want to keep this safety net in place, here's how.

First, free up all of your disk space by deleting all but the most current
restore point. Go to Start/All Programs/Accessories/Disk Cleanup and you
will see the option there.

Next, if your maximum size for System Restore is way too large, you should
adjust this. By default Vista sets the maximum size allocated for VSS to 15%
of the disk size. With some of newer drives, this can result in a huge
amount of space being allocated.

Go to Start and type cmd in the Program, right click the cmd item and
select "Run as administrator" option. OK the UAC prompts.

When the command window opens, type the following.

vssadmin list shadowstorage
Press ENTER.

The result will show the current amount of Used, Allocated, and Maximum
allowed size for the Volume Shadow Storage on your system. The following
command will set the maximum amount of disk space used for the shadow
storage to 10GB.

vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=10.0GB
Press ENTER.

(type the command as shown, including the spaces)
You should see a message that the command succeeded.

You can change the final (MAXSIZE=) value in the command to suit yourself.
(ie:
change 10.0GB to 5GB)

This command assumes that your system drive is C:
 
Ronnie Vernon MVP said:
Squishy

The Volume Shadow Copy can be important in preventing data loss. I would
recommend that you do not disable it.

If you want to keep this safety net in place, here's how.

First, free up all of your disk space by deleting all but the most current
restore point. Go to Start/All Programs/Accessories/Disk Cleanup and you
will see the option there.

Next, if your maximum size for System Restore is way too large, you should
adjust this. By default Vista sets the maximum size allocated for VSS to
15% of the disk size. With some of newer drives, this can result in a huge
amount of space being allocated.

Go to Start and type cmd in the Program, right click the cmd item and
select "Run as administrator" option. OK the UAC prompts.

When the command window opens, type the following.

vssadmin list shadowstorage
Press ENTER.

The result will show the current amount of Used, Allocated, and Maximum
allowed size for the Volume Shadow Storage on your system. The following
command will set the maximum amount of disk space used for the shadow
storage to 10GB.

vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=10.0GB
Press ENTER.

(type the command as shown, including the spaces)
You should see a message that the command succeeded.

You can change the final (MAXSIZE=) value in the command to suit yourself.
(ie:
change 10.0GB to 5GB)

This command assumes that your system drive is C:

--

Ronnie Vernon
Microsoft MVP
Windows Shell/User
Click to expand...

Thanks for that very informative post, Ronnie.

Wonder why MS didn't make it easy to admin the shadowcopy thingy from a GUI
tool?

Awwwww! I'm just kiddin'! We all know why.

squishy
 
TY Ronnie, this did the trick. Just deleting all but the last Restore Point
brought me back up to 654GB.

FYI, what probably got me into this mess is that I often DL 5Gb a day onto
C: and then delete or move 99.999%+ of that to local E: or F:, or network
drives.
 
Back
Top