Is System Restore Taking Up A Lot Of Drive Space?

[dave.m]

Windows XP keeps System Restore points for 90 days, which, on average of one point every 24 hours is quite a lot of space being taken up on your HD.

If you think about it, any problem that you may have that needs you to restore to a previous time will normally be cured by restoring your computer back to a date about 1 week ago at the most. Any faulty installed program will cause problems within a week of being installed and if uninstalleing does not cure the problem then a system restore normally will.

To reduce the number of days that restore points are kept, thus freeing up space, can be done using a simple .vbs script.

Follow this link and click on the:
XPSystemRestoreLife.vbs (2nd one down)

http://bertk.mvps.org/html/srscripts.html

When downloaded, extract the file, then double click to open it and set the days to 45 instead of 90.
That will free-up half the sapce that it used.

dave

 

[doormouse1]

I don't know if the above post is legit or not, but you should NEVER bits of code you don't understand from unknown sources. Even if you trust the guys that gives you the link, he might be unaware if it's safe.

There's an easier way to do it anyway.

If you want to limit the disk space system restore uses, do the following;
-click start
-select control panel
-select system
-select system restore
-select whichever drive holds windows (usually C
-set the maximum disk space you want to allocate to system restore.

 

[shortplank]

Incidentally, just to doormouse1's post, System Restore files are kept in a hidden folder in the root of your hard disk in a folder called "System Volume Information" (i.e. c:\System Volume Information).

In order to see it, go to Control Panel and open the Folder Options item, click on the View tab and then de-check "Hide protected operating system files". You'll have to accept the warning when you do it.

If you do actually do this, evening just out of curiosity, please turn it back on afterwards - you should never need to go near these files and even attempting to open/view them could cause seriously major problems for Windows.

I'll also echo doormouse1 on the vbs script - you should never run stuff like that when you don't know where it's from. If there is a vbs script to do it, then you'll be able to do it yourself somewhere instead and that way you know how to revert the settings back it it all goes pear shaped...


Steve.

 

[empip]

Part of the VB code suggested .....
[code:1]cFreq = GetObject("winmgmts:\\.\root\default:SystemRestoreConfig='SR'").RPGlobalInterval / 60 / 60

If cFreq = 24 Then
msg = "Your System Restore Point creation interval is set to the default value of 24 hours."[/code:1]

Looks like RPGlobalInterval is the time interval between system restore point creation... in seconds. 60x60=3600 ~ number of secs in 1 hour

In XP Pro registry ....
View media item 3331
Default value (decimal) 86400 ( 86400 ÷ 3600 = 24 hours )
[code:1]
DiskPercent
The maximum amount of disk space on each drive that can be used by System Restore. This value is specified as a percentage of the total drive space. The default value is 12 percent.
Windows Vista: Receives a value from the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). This this is the maximum amount of disk space on each drive that can be used by System Restore. The default value is 15 percent of the total drive space or 30 percent of the available free space, whichever is smaller.

RPGlobalInterval
The absolute time interval at which scheduled system checkpoints are created, in seconds. The default value is 86,400 (24 hours).
Windows Vista: Receives a value from the task scheduler for System Restore. Zero if the task is disabled.

RPLifeInterval
The time interval for which restore points are preserved, in seconds. When a restore point becomes older than this specified interval, it is deleted. The default age limit is 90 days.
Windows Vista: Receives a value of UINTMAX.

RPSessionInterval
The time interval at which scheduled system checkpoints are created during the session, in seconds. The default value is zero, indicating that the feature is turned off.
Windows Vista: Receives zero if System Restore is disabled.
[/code:1]

The beauty of drive imaging is getting to look inside system files without danger ... I halved the space allowed for restore points - made a large difference to image file size...