VISTA RESTORE...part 2

[denmarfl]

I posted a simiilar question under Vista; System Restore......and several
responses were helpful, but the root cause was not part of anyone's reply.

Running Vista Home Prem 32BIT

I now know how to change the size of the HDD space Vista reserves for
Restore points....thanks to Jelly-Bean.

I still would like to know;

1) What is the default HDD space Vista Reserves for System Restore Points?
2) Another reply to my Part 1 question indicated a user was experiencing the
same issue, losing 3 to 4GB of HDD space a day...and Dell instructed that
user to turn Off Restore to fix the problem. This to me is not a fix.

Given that I was losing 3 to 4GB space a day......was it as a Resullt of
System Restore Points or could there be other issues?

My PC is running fine except for this issue. Could\Would all New Restore
Points save a file 3 to 4GB in size, and if that is so, does this Restore
Point File just keep its size, grew Larger....and consume 3 to 4GB of HDD
space daily and go on forever? This just doesn't seem so, I have been
running this PC for nearly 2 years and I just saw this issue start about 2
weeks ago.....seems it started at or near the time of the Vista SP2
Download....but not sure.

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

I posted a simiilar question under Vista; System Restore......and several
responses were helpful, but the root cause was not part of anyone's reply.

Running Vista Home Prem 32BIT

I now know how to change the size of the HDD space Vista reserves for
Restore points....thanks to Jelly-Bean.

I still would like to know;

1) What is the default HDD space Vista Reserves for System Restore Points?
2) Another reply to my Part 1 question indicated a user was experiencing
the
same issue, losing 3 to 4GB of HDD space a day...and Dell instructed that
user to turn Off Restore to fix the problem. This to me is not a fix.

Given that I was losing 3 to 4GB space a day......was it as a Resullt of
System Restore Points or could there be other issues?

My PC is running fine except for this issue. Could\Would all New Restore
Points save a file 3 to 4GB in size, and if that is so, does this Restore
Point File just keep its size, grew Larger....and consume 3 to 4GB of HDD
space daily and go on forever? This just doesn't seem so, I have been
running this PC for nearly 2 years and I just saw this issue start about 2
weeks ago.....seems it started at or near the time of the Vista SP2
Download....but not sure.

By default, Vista allocates 15% of the drive space to System Restore. When
the limit is reached, the oldest restore points are dumped to make way for
the newest. So, no, it doesn't grow forever..

 

[denmarfl]

Thanks....

So it is your feeling the 3 to 4GB of space I am losing daliy is most likey
from System Restore?

15% of the unused space on my HDD is 70GB.....Given the current Restore file
is now 3 to 4GB in size, each new Restore Point will continue to be saved at
this size until I reach @70GB and that is the space that will be taken up by
System Restore (although as other data is placed on the HDD the 15% will get
smaller in GB's)....and there is not way to 'Small down" or change the size
of the System restore File? If You delete all Restore points....will the
next System Restore File still be at the (in my case) 3 to 4 GB size?

 

[Richard Urban]

Not 15% of the unused space - 15% of the partition or hard drive total
capacity.

 

[RalfG]

Inline....

I posted a simiilar question under Vista; System Restore......and several
responses were helpful, but the root cause was not part of anyone's reply.

Running Vista Home Prem 32BIT

I now know how to change the size of the HDD space Vista reserves for
Restore points....thanks to Jelly-Bean.

I still would like to know;

1) What is the default HDD space Vista Reserves for System Restore Points?

None at all on FAT32 discs or discs smaller than 1GB.

Otherwise, SR will use up to 15% of the harddrive size or 30% of the
remaining available space as the drive fills up. The space used by SR should
actually decrease as your user files start to take up more than 85%
of the harddrive space.

2) Another reply to my Part 1 question indicated a user was experiencing
the
same issue, losing 3 to 4GB of HDD space a day...and Dell instructed that
user to turn Off Restore to fix the problem. This to me is not a fix.

Given that I was losing 3 to 4GB space a day......was it as a Resullt of
System Restore Points or could there be other issues?

Likely. Whether it is a bug or not I don't know but I'm seeing the same
thing. The behaviour starts up apparently at random. Initially the restore
points would be relatively small, around 300MB or so, and quite a few could
accumulate over time but at some point they start becoming huge. At first it
seemed to be tied in to the automatic restore points created whenever there
is a Windows Defender definitions update, which happens quite frequently
(and are a complete waste of space IMO).

Lately all restore points were huge, whether automatically created or
manual. The current restore points I have each consume several gigabytes,
the biggest chunk of which according to ShadowExplorer is a single file,
pagefile.sys @ 3.4GB. Apparently the same copy of pagefile.sys is being
used in as many as 4 different restore points, spanning across several days,
at least according to the date and time stamps on the files.

My PC is running fine except for this issue. Could\Would all New Restore
Points save a file 3 to 4GB in size, and if that is so, does this Restore
Point File just keep its size, grew Larger....and consume 3 to 4GB of HDD
space daily and go on forever? This just doesn't seem so, I have been
running this PC for nearly 2 years and I just saw this issue start about 2
weeks ago.....seems it started at or near the time of the Vista SP2
Download....but not sure.

I've been seeing this issue for a lot longer than that so SP2 is not
specifically implicated. I've just tried moving the pagefile to a
non-monitored drive to see if that helps. So far, so good. I deleted the
current restore points to recover the lost space. Had to reboot to initiate
moving the pagefile. The size of the new pagefile.sys is 2GB smaller than
the old one (system managed, it could grow to 6GB). Sure enough it was no
longer included when I created a new initial system restore point.

 

[denmarfl]

Did some research on the pagefile.sys...and perhaps you already knew this,
this file is the Swap File that I know was used under Win98 and I believe XP.
I recall that file used to grew to a huge size...then it would reduce in
size. Seems under Vista this Page File is saved with each System restore
Point which can make the SR point quite large and keeps duplicating itself in
size until all those SR points with the larger Page file have fallen off, and
of course the New smaller Page file is saved in the newer SR points. In my
case I had lost almost 30GB of HDD space...which to me seems overdone. Today
I noticed following a system Restore point I lost on 1 GB (whereas before I
was losing 3 to 4GB). I did restart the SR point cycle yesterday I turning
off System restore which deleted all the SR Points, then manually creating a
new SR Point. Hopefully my actions will have gotten this under control.