Vista System Restore: why such a hog?

System Restore on my notebook typically consumes 20 GB of my 160 GB hard drive. That's a lot, imho, especially when you think that the manufacturer takes about 8 GB of it for system recover.

Is 20 GB for System Restore really that necessary? And why MS took away the ablity to reduce or increase the allocation without some cryptic coding is beyond me.

Any insights?

 

8 GB = all the information (bloatware) that comes with your computer at factory settings.

20 GB = all that + a copy of the new stuff that you put on.

 

Yes and because of shadow copy it also stores every single program that you have, so if you uninstall a program today it's still in system restore.

 

No guys, system restore saves copies of files that are changed. It does not copy everything. It also will save off multiple restore points. When you manually set a restore point or the OS decides to create one, it notes the data and time of that point. Then it keeps track of all program files that are changed or deleted from that point on. Before a program file is changed or deleted, it makes a shadow copy of that file. It also makes note of program files added. Then lattter if you tell the OS to roll back to a specific restore point the OS knows which of the shadow copied files it needs to restore and the files it needs to delete.

That's overly simplified but provides the basics of what goes on behind the scenes.

Gary

 

Gary, your explanation is how I've always understood System Restore. But no one has quite answered the gist of my question yet.

Why does the system need/use 20 G?. I know the total allocation can be changed via the command line. But should I? 20 gigs just seems like an unreasonable amount, but I can be wrong.

 

20 GB sounds like a lot, however it is only 12.5%. I have my XP set at 10% and I've never had a problem yet.

 

"Unreasonable" is a rather subjective term. I believe the rule of thumb Vista defaults to is 15% of the drive. To some that is a lot, to others it is not. That's why Vista has the ability to allow you to change it. Personally, I think 15% is just fine, especially given how a lot of folks as soon as they open Vista think they know what they can and cannot safely tweak. Every day I see message from some, for lack of a better term, "newbie" who has hosed their system because they deleted some "un-necessary" file or used some "great tweak". With system restore in place their butts can be saved.

Bottom line for me, as long as I am not low on disk space 15% is just fine.

Gary

 

For me system restore only uses about 40GB, and i have a 400GB HD.

 

Calvin, did you adjust the amount of space Vista reserves for this? It seems to me I remember the 15% figure and ALSO a max amount but I can't find a reference to that at the moment.

Gary

 

No i didn't adjust a thing, but the thing is vista doesn't capture my documents and i have maybe 40GB in documents, and the other 40GB is for my system. right now i have 261GB free out of 400GB and i think i am doing very well.

 

Check out my "Where's my disk space going" guide for info on Shadow copy/system restore. Even more informative is this post at zdnet that goes very in depth about the volume shadow copy service.

 

Thanks for the links orev, i'll check 'em out.