Grooming Windows Vista backup

[Marc Hoffman]

Hi all...

I'm having problems with a client running Windows Vista backup. Their
external backup drive to which Vista is backing up data is filling up. Is
there any way to tell Vista to "groom" the data, removing older data to keep
the drive afloat? Or, is there way to have Vista completely reset the entire
backup set on a regular schedule?

Thank you!

 

[Robert]

There are a few ways. Do a disk clean-up on just that drive, when the
dialog box comes up to show the space you can save by deleting files, look
for the tab behind it, which says more options click on it and choose to
remove all but the latest restore points!
But a much better way would be to remove that drive from system restore
especially it being an external drive and no need to restore that. Unless
you don't have enough disk space on your boot drive.

 

[Marc Hoffman]

Hi Robert..

Thanks for your reply. However, I wasn't clear in my point that the external
drive is the drive used for backup. I can't remove the drive from Windows
backup, or we won't have a backup . Does this change any suggestions that
you might have?

Thanks again!

 

[Robert]

I see ...... So you are using the USB disk drive for a back up as in file
syschronizing ? Also is it indexed? That's why Windows is using it as part
of system restore.
In any case its useing to much space! I noticed Vista uses a large amount of
space for system restore. Up to around 15 of disk. You can change that
through the command prompt function.

HERE IS HOW>

Decrease Storage Space Allocated To System Restore
While system restore is a God send it can have a tendency to consume large
amounts of disk space. By default System restore is allocated a minimum of
15% of disk volume for restore points.

Decreasing system restore space is somewhat a trade off - reduce the
allocated space and, although you gain extra free space, you also loose the
earlier system restore points. If you are happy having a reduced number of
system restore points available, then by all means reduce the allocated
space.

However, before you can make an informed decision as to how much to reduce
the space allocated to system restore, it is wise to find out just how much
space system restore is actually consuming.

In Windows XP increasing or decreasing the available space to system restore
was no more complex than opening the System window in Control panel,
clicking the system restore tab, then clicking the settings button and
adjusting a slider bar to increase or decrease the space.

In Windows Vista this option has now disappeared. the whole process of
enlarging or reducing system restore space has become more complex. Instead
of a simple slider bar all such alterations must now be done via command
line option.

To see how much space system restore is actually taking up you need to use
the Volume Shadow Copy Service Administration Tool (vssadmin, for short),
which runs from an elevated command prompt as follows:

1/ Click Start

2/ From the Start menu Click All programs followed by Accessories

3/ On the Accessories menu Right Click on the Command Prompt option

4/ From the drop Down menu that appears, click the Run as administrator
option

5/ When the Command Prompt window opens type: vssadmin list shadowstorage
and Press Enter

6/ The results should read something like this:

C:\Windows\system32>vssadmin list shadowstorage

vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool

(C) Copyright 2001-2005 Microsoft Corp.

Shadow Copy Storage association

For volume: (C\\?\Volume{db8e056a-6294-11db-9f9f-806e6f6e6963}\

Shadow Copy Storage volume:
(C\\?\Volume{db8e056a-6294-11db-9f9f-806e6f6e69

63}\

Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 197.766 MB

Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 400 MB

Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 2.092 GB

7/ In this example the C: drive is 19.5GB in size. The currently used
storage space is 197.766MB and the Maximum space allocated for System
restore is 2.092GB.

8/ The current stored system restore points are 2. this can be found out by
using the vssadmin list shadows command.

9/ In my opinion the 2.092GB Maximum shadow copy storage space is quite
acceptable for this size of partition. However, the larger the
drive/partition the more space will, inevitably, be allocated for system
restore points.

Reducing the Allocated Space
To reduce the allocated space we need to use the Resize option in the form
of:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=[here add the drive letter]: /For=[here
add the drive letter]: /Maxsize=[here add the maximum size]

Let us assume that we wished to have a maximum size of 2GB from this
particular partition/drive. The command line option would look something
like this:

C:\Windows\system32>vssadmin resize shadowstorage /On=C: /For=C:
/Maxsize=2GB

So to put this in to practice you proceed as follows:

1/ Click Start

2/ From the Start menu Click All programs followed by Accessories

3/ On the Accessories menu Right Click on the Command Prompt option

4/ From the drop Down menu that appears, click the Run as administrator
option

5/ When the Command Prompt window opens type: vssadmin resize shadowstorage
/on=[here add the drive letter]: /For=[here add the drive letter]:
/Maxsize=[here add the maximum size] and Press Enter

6/ if all goes well you should see a message saying 'Successfully resized
the shadow copy storage association

7/ Your System Restore shadow storage has now been resized



.....Rob