Diskspace growing 1 GB/day (or more)

[Birk Binnard]

My 3-week old Vista Home Premium system increases its total disk space
by about 1 GB/day. Apparently this is caused by the automatic
generation of system restore points, because when I do a Disk Cleanup
and remove all but the last restore point my total disk usage goes down
to roughly the same amount (20 GB) every time.

The first time I did this cleanup my space usage went from 54GB to 20GB.

Is this normal for Vista?

 

[gls858]

Yes, that is normal. Most of that was from (I guess) initial
application installs.

The rate should slow down. System Restore is only supposed to use a
certain percentage of your disk and when it uses that it will start to
remove old restore points. I don't know of a way to lower this
percentage which would be a useful feature with all the very large HDDs
on the market today.

However you can kill this issue by turning off System Restore. It's not
recommended but certainly an option.

My 3-week old Vista Home Premium system increases its total disk space
by about 1 GB/day. Apparently this is caused by the automatic
generation of system restore points, because when I do a Disk Cleanup
and remove all but the last restore point my total disk usage goes
down to roughly the same amount (20 GB) every time.

The first time I did this cleanup my space usage went from 54GB to 20GB.

Is this normal for Vista?

The size of system restore can be managed in system properties. I'm not
at a Vista machine right now and I don't remember the steps but if you
type system restore in Help and support you should find the settings.

gls858

 

[Birk Binnard]

Thanks for confirming my suspicions. I did disable the System Restore
process on my XP system and never suffered any ill consequences. I'll
probably do the same with Vista.

Seems to me MS should allow a set amount of disk space to be specified
for the Restore checkpoints. My HD is 250GB and I'd rather set aside a
fixed amount for restore backups. Or maybe we should be allowed to say
how many restore points we want saved.

 

[gls858]

Thanks for confirming my suspicions. I did disable the System Restore
process on my XP system and never suffered any ill consequences. I'll
probably do the same with Vista.

Seems to me MS should allow a set amount of disk space to be specified
for the Restore checkpoints. My HD is 250GB and I'd rather set aside a
fixed amount for restore backups. Or maybe we should be allowed to say
how many restore points we want saved.

Guess I was mistaken. Did a search and found that Vista doesn't allow
you to size your system restore. I did find this link that explains how
to minimize space used.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/2g8zpv

http://www.watchingthenet.com/how-to-reduce-disk-space-used-by-windows-vista-system-restore.html

gls858

 

[Justin]

Thanks for the info! However that seems to affect shadow copy on a global
scale. Personally I would want to leave shadow copy alone.

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Birk

One way to limit wasting space on System Restore is to place Vista
in a dedicated partition say 25 gb. Set System Restore to monitor
that partition only and not monitor any other partition.

--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Terry]

Thanks for confirming my suspicions. I did disable the System Restore
process on my XP system and never suffered any ill consequences. I'll
probably do the same with Vista.

Seems to me MS should allow a set amount of disk space to be specified
for the Restore checkpoints. My HD is 250GB and I'd rather set aside a
fixed amount for restore backups. Or maybe we should be allowed to say
how many restore points we want saved.

Guess I was mistaken. Did a search and found that Vista doesn't allow
you to size your system restore. I did find this link that explains how
to minimize space used.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/2g8zpv

http://www.watchingthenet.com/how-to-reduce-disk-space-used-by-windows-vista-system-restore.html

gls858[/QUOTE]

Other than not being able to change it via the UI, the article states
you can reduce the allocated space, so you weren't wrong. At least Birk
can stop losing a gig a day (which is ridiculous, "oh, you have a 300
gig drive, well I'M taking 45 gig of it!"). The machines are OURS and
we don't need MS telling us how much space it's going to take from us.
Even making it this difficult to change is a cheap shot. Why should the
typical user have to resort to a command line?

And I can't remember SR EVER working when it was really needed anyway.
In fact in all the machines I've ever tried a SR, only once or twice was
it successful. Just yesterday a laptop on a network I admin, could no
longer open IE since Monday. NONE of the restore points worked. Finally
just installed FF.

--
Terry

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[Birk Binnard]

Excellent reference. I successfully resized to 3 GB the max amount of
disk space Vista will use. It was 35GB.

 

[Justin]

So 14% is the magic number.

Keep in mind that 14% is not only for Restore Points. It's also for shadow
copy in general which is a handy backup to keep around.

Just FYI.

 

[Juan I. Cahis]

Terry, can ERUNT be used with Vista?

Guess I was mistaken. Did a search and found that Vista doesn't allow
you to size your system restore. I did find this link that explains how
to minimize space used.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/2g8zpv

http://www.watchingthenet.com/how-to-reduce-disk-space-used-by-windows-vista-system-restore.html

gls858

Other than not being able to change it via the UI, the article states
you can reduce the allocated space, so you weren't wrong. At least Birk
can stop losing a gig a day (which is ridiculous, "oh, you have a 300
gig drive, well I'M taking 45 gig of it!"). The machines are OURS and
we don't need MS telling us how much space it's going to take from us.
Even making it this difficult to change is a cheap shot. Why should the
typical user have to resort to a command line?

And I can't remember SR EVER working when it was really needed anyway.
In fact in all the machines I've ever tried a SR, only once or twice was
it successful. Just yesterday a laptop on a network I admin, could no
longer open IE since Monday. NONE of the restore points worked. Finally
just installed FF.[/QUOTE]
Thanks
Juan I. Cahis
Santiago de Chile (South America)
Note: Please forgive me for my bad English, I am trying to improve it!

 

[Terry]

On 4/12/2007 4:31 PM On a whim, Juan I. Cahis pounded out on the keyboard

Terry, can ERUNT be used with Vista?

Thanks
Juan I. Cahis
Santiago de Chile (South America)
Note: Please forgive me for my bad English, I am trying to improve it!

Hi Juan,

Yes, it does work with Vista. I install on almost all machines I setup
(and most of them on this network), but unfortunately I didn't configure
that particular laptop. It possibly could have saved the day.

--
Terry

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[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

Dirk

System Restore is important for more than restoring the entire system. In
Vista it consists of several layers of protection, the most important of
which is the Previous Versions of files. Here is a website that has an easy
way to limit the amount of disk space that system restore uses.

How to adjust disk space in Windows Vista:
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/diskspacev.html

 

[Terry]

On 4/12/2007 4:49 PM On a whim, Ronnie Vernon MVP pounded out on the
keyboard

Dirk

System Restore is important for more than restoring the entire system. In
Vista it consists of several layers of protection, the most important of
which is the Previous Versions of files. Here is a website that has an easy
way to limit the amount of disk space that system restore uses.

How to adjust disk space in Windows Vista:
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/diskspacev.html

Ronnie,

You bring up a point that prompts these questions;

How often do old versions of files need to be saved?

Would they be included in Birk's 1 gig per day?

With RAID and backups and everything else, why wouldn't MS allow System
Restore to be configurable by the user, to only save what a particular
user wanted, rather than only allow the limited command line options?

MS always seems to take product enhancement too far and blows it. With
the millions they spend on development, it's sad that no one asks these
simple questions and gives real usability.

--
Terry

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[Justin]

Shadow copy has been VERY successful. The average user simply does not
backup nor do they backup properly. For the user that does their own DECENT
backup, they can turn off system restore. Piece of cake.

These technical users you speak of are NOT being bothered at all. Just turn
it off. What's the problem?

How often do old versions of files need to be saved?

Whenever the file changes and ONLY the changes.

Would they be included in Birk's 1 gig per day?

Yes.

 

[DevilsPGD]

In message <[email protected]> "Justin"

These technical users you speak of are NOT being bothered at all. Just turn
it off. What's the problem?

Or better yet, leave it on and use it.

 

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

Terry

<inline>

On 4/12/2007 4:49 PM On a whim, Ronnie Vernon MVP pounded out on the
keyboard


Ronnie,

You bring up a point that prompts these questions;

How often do old versions of files need to be saved?

This is up to the user. The previous versions of files are created whenever
a System Restore Point, Files Backup, or a Complete PC Backup is created.
The Previous versions feature does not create a separate copy of the files.
The space used by all of these utilities can be controlled with the Disk
Cleanup utility.

Would they be included in Birk's 1 gig per day?

Yes, see above.

With RAID and backups and everything else, why wouldn't MS allow System
Restore to be configurable by the user, to only save what a particular
user wanted, rather than only allow the limited command line options?

System Restore is just what the name implies, in case of disaster, it is
designed to restore the system to a previous point in time when it was
working OK.

MS always seems to take product enhancement too far and blows it. With
the millions they spend on development, it's sad that no one asks these
simple questions and gives real usability.

By necessity, utilities included in Windows are not designed to compete with
third party applications. If you want full featured applications you will
need to go to a third party program. Microsoft does extensive usability
studies with a wide variety of groups that compromise a broad cross section
of their target market.

References:

The Filing Cabinet : Restore previous version:
http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/search.aspx?q=restore+previous+version&p=1

Selected Scenarios for Maintaining Data Integrity with Windows Vista:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/aa905099.aspx

Usability Studies, Labs:
http://www.microsoft.com/usability/studies.mspx

Usability Studies, Mac
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/macbu/default.aspx?pid=usabilitystudies

Usability Research and User Feedback are Keys to Accessible Product Planning
at Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/enable/microsoft/perkins.aspx

 

[Justin]

In message <[email protected]> "Justin"


Or better yet, leave it on and use it.

I would recommend people leave it on as I did in the beginning of this
thread. I also recommend people DO NOT set the recently discovered setting
too low. Give it at least 5% of your HDD size.

I leave it off myself as I RAID5 my data drive(s). I don't care what
happens to my system drive. However I'm very happy to have shadow copy
back!!!

 

[Adam Albright]

I would recommend people leave it on as I did in the beginning of this
thread. I also recommend people DO NOT set the recently discovered setting
too low. Give it at least 5% of your HDD size.

I leave it off myself as I RAID5 my data drive(s). I don't care what
happens to my system drive. However I'm very happy to have shadow copy
back!!!

More brillant advice from Justin. He don't care what happens to his
system drive.

ROTFLMAO!

 

[Justin]

More brillant advice from Justin. He don't care what happens to his
system drive.

ROTFLMAO!

Why should I? You could smash my entire machine and I would be just fine.
Aside from actually having to fork out the cash to buy a new machine. Can
you say the same?

 

[Guest]

XP used 12% of the capacity of the hard drive for system restore, if you left
it at the maximum. Vista uses 15% maximum