You can also delete restore points quite easily in Vista by using Disk Cleanup in Accessories. I did mine that way, and it freed up a nice amount of space. The above is not recommendation listed here is not something a novice should venture into.

Raven, using Disk Cleanup and the vssadmin command will delete restore points. Eventually you will need to run disk cleanup again to free up disk space. Running vssadmin command will alow you to set the max size of space you want System Restore to use (the default is 15% of each drive), instead of needing to run Disk Cleanup constantly.

For a PC that does not have a lot of disk space, 15% is a lot and they will need to run the command. Fortunately the command is simple to use..even for a novice!

I understand completely, thank you. But, in reading though the above, I see no recommendation for how much to set the amount of space allocated to Restore Points indicated. For a novice, this can be confusing. Perhaps an idea of the amount of space to give it would be in order. I am sure the author knows what a safe amount is.

Raven

Raven – it's impossible to recommend "a safe amount" since Computers can be set up with different partition sizes and overall total hard disk size will vary. The article provides a solution if the default number set by Vista (15%) takes up to much disk space.

Since you needed to run Disk Cleanup to free up space, that must mean the default number of 15% is too high for the amount of disk space you have available (otherwise, why would you run Disk Cleanup?). Try cutting the percentage in half or less and keep testing until you comfortable with the amount of disk space is used by System Restore.

More than likely you won't be going very far back for a restore. If something goes wrong on your Computer…you will know it immediately, and using more than two or three restore points probably will not fix the problem.

I followed all of the instructions perfectly but it won't resize for me. I get an error saying'/For' is not recognizable as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file

@Allan1

Verify there are no syntax errors in the command (check that spaces exist between each argument in the command). Also runvssadmin /?from the command prompt, to make sure you can list available commands that are supported with vssadmin.

Yep I did everything. I had x-setup (latest version) installed and used that to try and adjust the size of system restore. It didn't so I uninstalled it. Do you think it had something to do with this problem?

Great thanks original poster, just what I wanted. I fail to work out any logic by removing this option. In my case it was taking up 12Gb of a 110Gb drive. I've reduced it to 6Gb.

There is an error in your example though, it should be MaxSize NOT MaxSizeSpec.

Thanks again.

Alex

thankx. this was an awesome help after i was getting suspicious as to why my hard disk space is decreasing and i google'd to find a way around as i didnt know to manually set the storage parameter to a lesser % provided microsoft havent given any direct option to do so. i have set my max to 1GB as my total is 80GB with C:\ having 20GB partition completely for vista.

Just to be on the safe side. Is this a recommended size i have. Cos i always do backup my much needed files on my external drive and dont need any backup and aint much of a restore point fan. But i would like a professional opinion on this.

ONCE again…thankx a lot! 😀

genex3m

With an 80GB hard drive you can half the 15%, but you probably want to test that percentage first (in your case it may not matter much since you don't use restores). Also take in to consideration the "previous version" option for restoring files. If you want to use this feature, you may need more space for restore points. Also, "previous version" is not available in all versions of Vista.

DUDE…GOD BLESS YOU…HOLY #$*@…seriously man…your not gonna believe this…I got a new computer..Dell XPS 410 with 500gb hdd and was so happy, but then, everytime i did something my hdd capacity decreased…it turns out that my System Restore Storage was set at a max of 60 GIGABYTES…GOD DAMN…seriously…thanks alot

@froction,

🙂 Cool, glad to help out!

I'm with Froction…I got an XPS 410 with a 500GB HDD and thought I was going crazy as I watched my hard drive space dwindle before my eyes. I've been running virus and spyware scans with no success and it's been driving me nuts!! I did a Google search and found this page…thank you so much for your help and wisdom!! I even talked to Dell Support today about my issue, and the guy never once mentioned the System Restore. I did the 'vssadmin list shadowstorage' and found that 38GB of space have been used so far, and a total of 68GB have been allocated for use. In your expert opinion, what would be a reasonable amount to reduce this to…34GB? Please let me know what you would recommend. I thank you in advance for your help and want to let you know that it is greatly appreciated!

@Jon

With a hard drive of 500GB, your half way to a terabyte of storage (I've built servers with far less storage than what you have available!). So leaving System Restore (SR) at 68G is nothing, unless you really plan on using a lot disk space.

If you have Business, Ultimate or Enterprise version of Vista, you may want leave it and consider taking advantage of Vista'sVolume Shadow copy which allows you to use the "previous versions" feature (recover previous versions of files). If you just have Home Basic or Premium then this feature is not available and you should be ok with reducing SR usage to 38GB.

I cannot run vssadmin list shadowstorage. The message is "No items found that satify the query"

@vuongtutruc

Make sure there are restore points being created and that you are running the command as an administrator. Check the event log for errors.

If nothing can be found you are probably having a problem with Vista. See thread here for similar problem: http://www.vistax64.com/vista-general/53056-cant-create-system-restore-points.html

I just ran vssadmin on my new Acer, it told me: "Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: Unbounded". Wow! 22 gigabytes of shadow file on a 32 GB drive partition. I don't know if "Unbounded" is something you could specify, or just the system's response to a malformed or corrupt setup. But, if you wanted to cripple your future ex's Vista computer, "unbounded" would be a good way to do it.

Here is my problem related to the disk space. Please read this post. http://www.vistax64.com/general-discussion/78577-disk-space-loss.html
I cannot fix the problem until now.

@vuongtutruc

Good information. Did you end up rebuilding your computer using HP Recovery Manager and rebuild Vista to fix your problem?

I didn't. I'm worried about whether registry of all other softwares will be influenced or not or they will be wiped out. Give me an advice!

If you rebuild, everything will be wiped out. Considering all the problems you've been having, I would do it and start over.

Thanks but I won't rebuild it. It's so hard to start reinstalling heap of softs. I'll continue to find what's happening.

Hi!
I've been wondering why my Hard Drive keeps decreasing every move
that I make on my laptop. I don't save much on my hdd. And it confuses
me why it decreases so much in a day.
I found out about this strategy of freeing some space on your hard drive.
I followed the steps and retrieved an amount of 18GB of my hard drive.
It went from 81GB to 99GB. I don't really know much about these computer
stuff. But I was also wondering what MaxSize was. Because I set mine to 1GB.
I don't know if that's enough but can anyone help me on this?
Thank you!

HI
this thread was extremely useful for me.
i was thinking of restoring my laptop to original configuration….and loosing all of my installed softwares.
It helped me clear up 13GB of free space.
I was surprised to see some people clearing upto 30GB by this!!!
However…after performing the disk cleanup…i still see that 7 GB is still occupied by something.

I know it's a small size to talk about…but can anyone tell me that WHAT is taking up 7GB of my HDD?

Hi Dhanur,

Good that you came across this topic to see how you were loosing hard disk space. well that 7gb is being allocated for your current restore points. so if you dont want to use the previous restore points you can delete that and keep the latest restore points.

@Carla

MaxSize is the maximum amount of disk space you want System Restore to use. I don't know what disk size you have, but you indicated 99GB. So with a hard drive of that amount, you may to bump it up a little more, the amount of space System Restore can take up.

I see.
So System restore is
basically the space you want for your
computer to restore documents and other things?
My laptop contains 120GB of hdd.
Is there an amount of space you can advice me
to increase my System Restore?
Thank you!

hi
well…i checked the space taken up by system restore files by vssadmin list shadowstorage method…and it showed that almost 1gb is occupied for system restore….what about the other 6GB?

@Carla
See my May 7th comment above for recommendation on setting amount of space.

@Dhanur
You may need to do a little digging and see where the disk space is being used. Either check out this article: http://www.watchingthenet.com/windows-tip-how-to-find-directories-that-are-taking-up-space-on-your-hard-disk.html

or run one of these utilities (both are good)
i.Disk – http://www.memecode.com/idisk.php
WinDirStat – http://windirstat.info/

I have read your comment on May 7th,
And now if I take half of 15%, that'll be around 7% right?
Which is 8.4GB in my case since I have a 120GB hdd.
So I can put my MaxSize Restore to 8.4 GB? :}
Sorry, I'm kinda slow on understanding things 😛
"(in your case it may not matter much since you don't use restores)"
is it because he has an external hdd and he can backup his files on there?
Thank you once again!
You've been a great help!

@Carla

8.4gigs is a good starting point. You can always change it later.

"is it because he has an external hdd and he can backup his files on there?"
Yes he backup his data (for example docs, mp3, etcc..) to an external hard drive. Remember, System Restore is NOT a substitute for backups. If you have files that you do not want to lose during a System or Hard Drive crash, you should always back them up on an external drive.

Wow! thank you so much! I just bought this pc and upgraded to Windows Vista Ultimate after two days of purchase. It was eating up 30 gigs already!! damn! I just did the run command like you said and it worked!! I freed up to 30 gigs…before my HD was only 231 of 289 now it's 265 of 289! not bad, eh?

Thank you very-very much!! I feel so relieved!!

@Rie

Your welcome!!

Wow.
I really needed to find this site. Turns out, my shadow copy limit was unbounded (that's scary). I had been wondering where my hard drive was going.

The Core

I too am very appreciative of this post. I was convinced I had a virus since space on a 300gb hard drive was fast diminishing. So fast infact that I began deleting items to keep up. It was only when I started to delete files in system restore that the penny dropped. I too, with your help, discovered that the max storage was set at 'unbounded'. Phew! Saved my life. Saved my marriage. Saved my sanity.

Why would PCWORLD and/or Advent set 'Unbounded' defeats me unless it sends hapless individuals scurrying to their repair department.

@Core & reg

Glad to help out!

This is a great post.I've recovered over 50G of space.I have a problem however.When using diruse it reports a directory using 69GB called c:\users\william\my documents but that directory while it exists is empty and attempting to delete it returns back directory does not exist.See below:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6000]
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation.All rights reserved.

C:\Users\William>dir
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is E86B-1D35

Directory of C:\Users\William

09/28/200701:04 PM.
09/28/200701:04 PM..
03/01/200708:24 PMContacts
09/25/200707:46 PMDesktop
09/28/200701:11 PMDocuments
09/23/200707:20 AMDownloads
05/19/200708:57 AMFavorites
08/30/200710:10 AMLinks
04/17/200707:16 PMMusic
09/28/200706:12 PMPictures
02/20/200703:23 PMSaved Games
08/30/200710:10 AMSearches
09/25/200707:05 PMVideos
0 File(s)0 bytes
13 Dir(s)91,740,405,760 bytes free

C:\Users\William>cd my documents

C:\Users\William\My Documents>dir
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is E86B-1D35

Directory of C:\Users\William\My Documents

File Not Found

C:\Users\William\My Documents>rd my documents
The system cannot find the file specified.
The system cannot find the file specified.

C:\Users\William\My Documents>cd..

C:\Users\William>

The OS is associating exactly the same size and number of files to the "my documents" directory as to the "Documents" folder.I have a similiar problem with a "local settings" directory that exists, has no files in it, cannot be deleted, but diruse returns it using 9GB.

Any thoughts.

thanks in advance.

@Bill

Your observation about Vista associating "My Documents" folder to the "Documents" folder is correct and the reason why is because My Documents is a junction point.

A Junction Point is a physical location on a local hard disk that points to another location on that disk (think of it as a shortcut).

In Vista, Junction Points are used for backward compatibility of pre-Vista applications (written for older MS OS's such as XP and 2000). When these pre-Vista apps reference the My Documents folder in Vista, it will be re-directed to the Documents folder. With out the junction points in place, the application will fail to run.

Why did Microsoft decide to get rid of the old folder names, such as My Documents and others? Who knows other than why did they do it in the first place and now decide it was a bad idea.

Anyway, to help you understand why the duruse command is reporting 69G in the My Document folder, is to be able to visual where the junction actually points to by using the following command (at C:\Users\William)

dir /AL

This command will display all the junction points in the folder and where they point to.

For example, here is mine (the real folder is in brackets):

Application Data [C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming]
Cookies [C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies]
Local Settings [C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local]
My Documents [C:\Users\Owner\Documents]
NetHood [C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Network Shortcuts]
PrintHood [C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Printer Shortcuts]
Recent [C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent]
SendTo [C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo]
Start Menu [C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu]
Templates [C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Templates]

Now that you know why, it would be a bad idea to delete a junction point AND the real folder it points to. Instead, run the command, find the REAL folder location and clean out anything under it.

Hope this helps!

Still can't find my missing GB's and I don't need/use restore points…I have a Thinkpad w/Vista factory installed.Recently I saw that I have 78GB used of 105GB on my C drive.What the ?I accounted for 43GB in my file system using Disktective but cant find the missing 35GB's… that's a lot more than 15% for Shadow Copy.The analysis tools show folders RRbackups, Documents and Settings, and System Volume Information all without file sizes or space usage info.

How can I see how big these folders are or where else something may be gorging on 35GB's of my data…?

@Neal

Try WinDirStat – http://windirstat.info/ and see if reports those folders sizes.
Also, read my comment on October 1, 2007 (Document and Settings really points to C:\Users).

Thanks, I've been struggling with only 7% free disk space and have tried loads of things.Your fix worked perfectly.

I've decrease the max size for the system restore and ran disk cleanup, yet I did not recover any additional space.Any recommendations on what I need to do next?

Hey, maybe anyone here can help me –
I have this same problem as everyone, with missing disk space. The restore points / shadow copy is reported to only take 6GB and limited to 7.5GB, however I am missing about 70GB additional (disk space is ~140GB, windirstat / rightclick>poperties / everything else reports ~60GB in use, vssadmin list shadowstorage says max is 7.5GB, and free space reported is (currently) about 5GB – so I am missing 142-60-7-5 = 70GB).
Anyone has any other idea for where could the disk space hide?

Thanks

By the way, I have a lenovo thinkpad. Thought this might be related (as thinkpad also has some sort of system restore).

OK I have indeed found out that the tinkpads have a similar, additional feature that takes up much more space, and found that it takes up about 55GB of my disk space. However, just like Vista's system restore, it is too not so easy to manipulate. I am not sure how to save space rather than just delete backups (for which I might be sorry later…) I know the backups are incremental so just deleting some of them (even if I find a way to do so) might make the later ones not work. Limiting the number of allowed backups from lenovo settings deletes the recent backups, which I would probably need most… 🙁 and limiting the allowed space does not erase old backups but rather just prevent me from making any new bakcups.
Anyone knows this problem and can help?

thanks

I have a question. I'm a bit paranoid with things like this, so I was wondering if shrinking the disk space used would in any way shape or form affect the hidden recovery partition I have on my laptop? Thanks in advance.

@pH

Using the vssadmin command as shown in the article will not effect your hidden recovery partition.

iam using windoes vista operaing system, my hard disk shows more space as occupied but if i see in hard disk it is having only half of the space than shown why it is showing like that is ther any way to solve the problem

AWESOME ARTICLE!!!
Just SO useful..!
Thanks

I've just released 184.3Gb! I only noticed recently, as I've installed and removed a couple of trial program suites. I thought SWMBO and the kids were storing lots of things, but it turns out I had the "UNBOUNDED" upper limit

thanks man
you can use disk cleanup and click more options and and choose clean up

I can not thank you enough for this page. Recently a program I installed destroyed my music directory. The program was call Songbird and was supposed to be the Firefox of Media Players. But after installing it completely destroyed my music. After deleted all my music though, I realized that about 50 gigs were completely uncounted for, and through this tutorial, was able to recover that space. Thank you so much!

THANK YOU!! The shadow copies on my mother's Vista laptop had claimed 200GB of space (I'm not exaggerating) and I was totally stumped as to where all the space was going. Your suggestions cleared it right up!

Thanks for this 🙂 I have a 500 gig HD and the maxsize was set at 68 gig.. I thought that was a bit much, so I changed it to 38 gigs. First time I've ever used the command prompt btw – I was always too scared to use it, even tho I've been using computers since 2000 – I was afraid I'd mess something up. However it worked and everything went fine.Thanks again 🙂

Thanks for this info, helped me out a lot when I went from 50GB of HDD space down to 8GB in a day from just browsing the web.Not sure why Microsoft didn't put a natural cap on it instead of how much system restore could grab.

Your article on "How To Reduce Disk Space Used By Windows Vista System Restore" was a godsend and brought sanity to a very frustrated newbie to Vista. After many fruitless ours of googling to find a solution that WORKS was a relief.
Many Thanks

thanks man, it really works…..my system restore was using up 40GB and now i could limit it to 4GB…….thanks a million!!!!!!!

Thanks. I went from having 6GB of free space to 14GB. Bit worried though as I have a 80GB drive and set the limit to 2GB. Just have to wait and see….

Yep this worked perfectly for me, I figured I had just a lot more music than I had thought and it wasn't until I started moving files around that I noticed an issue. Using these commands I was able to check my shadow storage usage and it was, like many others, unbounded and by now using over 50% of my hardrive space.

Great information and a great thing to check out~Cheers

This was an AMAZING help, Im bookmarking this page asap.It beat days of 'dell help and support'instantly.

I have just reinstalled Vista.My C: is 223GB, with 19GB free.I can see the C:Windows folder is 11GB, any idea where the missing 8GB might be?

When I ran the vssadmin list shadowstorage it showed my C: using 27GB, I reduced it to 5GB.

On my D: (recovery?) is 10GB alocated with 4GB being used.Is this ness?

Again, thanks so much for this article.

ps- before reducing the shadowstorage, I ran disk cleanup and saved 5GB as well.

I had a 687GB hard drive..it appears that the default amount of space was set to 103Gb..which is wierd..I set it 20GB is it OK or did i make it too less

ThanX bro……….it's really work'sn u help me to save up to 4GB.

Great info.thanks!

I did a disc clean up last day in c and it also deleted my personal files in user's file and desktop.could you please send me how to recover my files.i have not created any back up discs.please mail to
[email protected]

my lap is always showing a disk full of 'c' local disk eventhough i m havin lots of free space in other disks. i m nt at all storin anything in dat disk.
please tell me suggestions to reduce my disk space.
please mail me at [email protected]

Thanks mate, I have a 300GB drive showing 28GB free with on 70 GB of Data on. 190GB was the shadow copy. Size was showing as unbounded. Followed your instructions and resized the shadow copy to 20GB . Recovered all the free space… Thanks a bundled…. seems incredible that the size was set as unbounded?

Thank you – I was losing 4GB of space to system restore. All sorted now.

HI
my laptop's specifications are
Acer Aspire 5635WLMi
Windows Vista Home Premium

160 GB HDD ( 69 GB for the C Drive and 69.5 GB for the D Drive.)

My C drive has 34.6 GB of Used Spaceand35.1 GB of Free space.

Out of 34.6 GB of Used Space, I can trace only 18.7 GB of memory usage. ( 34.6- 18.7 = 15.9 GB –> unknown)

At present my Maximum Shadow Copy storage space is 5GB.
I changed it from 10.467 GB to 5 GB after reading your article!

My Used shadow copy space changed from 9.246 to 4.479 GB after the above change.

I'm still not aware of 11.4 GB memory usage
(15.9 – 4.479= 11.4 GB)

Should I reduce my Maximum Shadow Copy storage space to 1GB or so..?!

I have deleted all the temporary files, internet temp files, unnecessary hidden files.
I have even finished the disc clean up for the C drive.

Please Help ASAP

Dude, you're a life saver. I was in the red zone (3gb left) and searched for an answer for 2 days.You freed up 24GB of free space on my 3 month old 320GB computer.Would it be TMI if I said …I love you?

I, too am in the 'red zone'; however…when I attempt to right click on the 'Run' command & choose 'Run As Admin'…I do not have that option.When I type the command in the 'Run'…the black screen pops up for a split second & disappears.

Help!

URGENT HELP NEEDED
I have tried everything including the system restore thing on my C drive but still i am left with only 11Mb of disk drive, I have to do more than 30 disk clean up per day.

I read the thing about vssadmin and tried the command but nothing was displayed not even shadow copy, I'm struggling with this since the last 3 months, my laptop is Acer Aspite 5310 please i need help, since 3 months my disk space has been by 23 GB ! unable to locate where it has gone, I have downloaded AVG, SpyBot, treesize but nothing helped and had to delete them coz my hard disk has almost no space

my computer has only 8 mb and everytime i type vssadmin shadow that thing, well nothing appears

Hi, when ever i type the command "vssadmin list shadowstorage" and enter. this is what i get.

"Error: You don't have the correct permission to run this command. please run this utility from a command that has elevated administrators previlages."

Can anyone help please. i seem to loose space everyday on my hard drive.
Thanx.

@Kimboa, its been a while since I have used Vista, but you should be able to right click the icon and select "Run as Administrator".That should help you out.

This is an awesome post, thanks for explaining it so well and helping us novices out. I freed up over 20GB in 5 minutes.