recovered 18gb after a vista restore..wtf is going on?

Well before...i had 102gb/149gb free...my computer was having problems while coming back from sleep mode, so I decided to do a restore from a restore point a few days back from the vista backup/restore program. I did not change any files, but miraculously, after the restore i had 120gb/free out of 149gb. All my files are still there, but this is a huge mystery to me. how did I gain 18gb out of nowhere? My backup was on an external HD, so that wasn't the solution.

I am so bewildered by this...how can 18gb come back out of nowhere? I had no other backups on my thinkpad HD...does anyone have any insight on this?

I am mind boggled. I guess it's a good thing..but im worried that something may be missing...18gb worth..wtf is going on? Thanks

 

It's probably the Shadow System Restore thing. You have business or ultimate versions of Vista I assume?

It basically gives you a nice save of a bunch of files on your HD.

Oops, accidentally pressed Ctrl+A and pressed a button and saved it.

You can right click on it, and go to "Previous Versions"
And you may have a few days old but at least a version of that file.

 

u must have removed the "volume shadow copy" files while you did the restore.. Vista creates a shadow copy of your files when ever you install/uninstall or make any system changes.. These takes up considerable space.. Yes, it can go upto 10-18 GB.. so when you used one of the restore points, the system removed all the shadow copies and released the space..

nothing to worry.. enjoy the space..

you can forcefully release this shadow space by doing a clean up of "files from all users"

 

Hybernate files get huge too, a restore probably undid a old hybernate file.

 

how can i even prevent vista from doing this? i dont want it hogging anymore resources than it already is

 

if you want to resize how much disk space system restore will you use you can run the following command as an administrator

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=[drive]: /for=[drive]: /maxsize=[size]

if vista is on your C: drive and you want to limit it to say 5 gb the commond is

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=C: /for=C: /maxsize=5GB

this did not work for me in command line, only worked in command prompt as an administrator. also the only caps it seemed to want was "C" and "GB". its up to you how much to resize it to, but the smaller it is the fewer restore points that can be saved. ive heard of this resize not even working for some people, that it just keeps using up to around 15GB. good luck.

 

I did what shantz24 suggested when I first got my laptop, but after a near-tragic registry error I set mine back to 15GB. I'll just reclaim the space if space becomes a problem, but until then I'll leave it as it is.

 

wow..i won't mess with those settings then

 

I have reinstalled while I am improving my performance and testing for my articles below about 8 times. Each time you do a system restore, especially from disk, there is a few GB space gain in the restored system. Nothing is lost however.