Decrease number of restore points

[xtine]

I noticed that my 280GB hard disk is seemingly suddenly down to 20GB. I see
that my used shadow storage space is 86GB and the allocated shadow space is
88GB and the max shadow space is "unbounded." I have the commands to resize
the max space, but I don't know what to resize it to. I know I have about
150GB of programs, files, etc on my c: drive. Can you advise? Is it
possible to determine the actual number of restore points that are kept and
then simply decrease that number? It would seem that with most problems you
wouldn't necessarily want to go back more than 3 or 4 points, would you? I
just don't know how the shadow size corresponds to the number of restore
points that are kept. 80+ GB just seems completely unreasonable!
Incidentally, I also have a recovery drive, presumably created by the
computer mfgr (Dell) with 15GB total, and 5GB free. I would so greatly
appreciate any suggestions.

 

[Gary M]

When you start running out of room, older restore points will automatically
be deleted. Other than that you can run the clean up tool and click on the
"Clean up system files" button (I'm doing this with Windows 7 beta, so it
might be a bit different in Vista).
There should be a "System Restore and Shadow Copies" section in which "You
can free more disk space by removing all but the most recent restore point".

 

[xtine]

Thanks Joe. A few more questions: To see how many restore points I have, I
started the system restore utility, and clicked "choose a different restore
point." When I click "show restore points older than 5 days," I see see only
10 restore points, and they only go back to 2/26. How on earth can the
shadow copy be 86 GB? Are there more restore points "hidden" somewhere where
I can't see them? could it be that something went wrong when a recent
restore point was created? If so, should I do a system restore back to a few
days ago when I noticed that my hard disk space was dwindling? How large is
your hard disk? I'm curious about the percent of your hard disk that you're
dedicating to your shadow storage. Again, I truly appreciate your help.

 

[xtine]

Thanks Gary, but it seems that in Vista, you have to use the vssadmin command
from a command prompt to do anything with shadow copies....

 

[xtine]

Thanks again. I'll check out the option to delete all but the most recent
restore point thru "More Options." I'm just using Vista's disk defragmenter
which is set by default to run once a week. Do you think I should turn it
off and just defragment manually?

 

[xtine]

Thanks for your help on this Joe. I decided to resize my max shadow space to
25GB, and my avail space on c: went from 22GB to 89GB! My shadow copy went
from 86GB to 17GB. I now have 4 restore points instead of 8, but I'm okay
with that. I still don't understand how your 7GB shadow space yields you 9
restore points and my 25GB shadow space only yields me 4 restore points. I
don't think I have an unusual number of programs, etc. Oh well. If you have
any thoughts, I'd love to hear them. Otherwise, thanks again!