System Restore Point fragmentation

[Guest]

Why are my System Restore Points (each about 12MB) spanned over 3000
fragments each (as reported by the Windows XP Disk Defragmenter)?
How do I reduce fragmentation of the Restore Points?

 

[Bob I]

What does it matter? You could turn off Restore and defrag and then turn
it back on.

 

[Guest]

That's what I did 3 months ago.
And I have the same problem again.

Windows XP Disk Defragmenter reports
Fragments File Size Most fragmented files
3,145 12 MB \System Volume Information\_restore{xxxx}\RP21

But Windows XP Explorer reports
RP21 is a folder of 54,100 files occupying 513MB !

 

[Gerry]

Restore points can be quite large. Yours at 12 mb are by no means
exceptional. If your free disk space is fragmented the system will seek
out spaces to put the restore point until the whole file is in place. It
follows that you may well have limited free disk space. In this case you
either need to free up space by removing unwanted files or add disk
space.

How large is your hard disk and how much free disk space?

--



Hope this helps.

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

 

[Bob I]

Personally, I would just leave it be. It isn't really an issue.

 

[Gerry]

Some thing odd about the information you quote from Windows Explorer. On
my machine a restore point has something like 3 folders and 140 files.
These files are typically compressed so you should see two sizes
reported in Windows Explorer. Size and Size on Disk. How many restore
points are held in the Volume Information Folder?

How large is your hard disk and how much free disk space.

--



Hope this helps.

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

 

[Bert Kinney]

Hi,

There is no need to defrag the System Volume Information folder. The only
time these files are accessed are in the restore process.

Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://bertk.mvps.org
Member: http://dts-l.org

 

[Bert Kinney]

And in this process, loose all existing restore points. Not a good idea.

Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://bertk.mvps.org
Member: http://dts-l.org

 

[Gerry]

Bert

I agree on the point that you make that it has no impact on the
effectiveness of System Restore. However, leaving it as it is leads to
greater fragmentation of free disk space and therefore fragmentation of
other files. If a user has multiple fragments it can be indicative that
there is a problem of limited free disk space which needs to be
addressed.

--
Regards.

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

 

[Guest]

My Disk Total Space is 111GB (NTFS)
Free: 68GB

9 total restore points (RP15 to RP23)

RP21
Size: 513MB
Size on disk: 506MB
Contains: 54,100 Files, 3 Folders

I defragment this disk every couple of months.

 

[Gerry]

Is your system currently running without any problems. If yes I doubt
you need 9 restore points.

Do you realise that if you have not changed the default disk space
allocation of 12% to System Restore it will collar 13.32 gb? Whilst you
currently have plenty of free space this may not always be so.

Run Disk CleanUp in all user profiles before running Disk Defragmenter.
Also to increase the free space on your XP partition select Start, All
Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk CleanUp, More Options, System
Restore and remove all but the latest System Restore point?

--



Hope this helps.

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