Adjusting The Amount Of Space System Restore Uses [Windows 7]

by on May 21, 2009 | 3 comments

On the PCMech LIVE show last night a question came in that asked where the setting is to adjust the space System Restore uses in Windows 7.

This actually took quite a bit of digging to find it. And to note, this is different compared to Vista’s location.

Step 1.

Start "ball", Control Panel

image

Step 2.

System and Security (left side green link)

image

Step 3.

System (right side green link)

image

Step 4.

System Protection (left side link)

image

Step 5.

System Protection (tab)

image

Step 6.

Configure (click configure button, see previous screen shot)

image

On this screen is the familiar slider where we can set the amount space Windows 7 uses for System Restore.

Faster ways to get there

Fast way:

  • Start "ball"
  • Right click Computer
  • Left click Properties from the small menu that appears
  • Click System Protection on left
  • Click System Protection tab
  • Click Configure button

Faster way:

  • Start "ball"
  • Type system in the "Search programs and files" field
  • Click System under Control Panel, like this:
    image
  • Click System Protection on left
  • Click System Protection tab
  • Click Configure button

Fastest way:

  • Win-key + Pause-Break key (keystroke)
  • Click System Protection on left
  • Click System Protection tab
  • Click Configure button
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  • mrcook

    Good detail. Can you show the steps in Vista ?

    • http://www.menga.net Rich Menga

      I would except I don’t have Vista unfortunately – but I do know it’s different in that OS compared to 7.

  • mrcook

    Found it! Vista allocates 15% of HD by default. I recovered 30Gb.

    If you want to change the amount of space used by System Restore, you should use the following command:

    vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=[drive letter]: /For=[drive letter]: /Maxsize=[maximum size]

    MaxSizeSpec must be 300MB or greater and accepts the following suffixes: KB (for kilobytes), MB (for megabytes), GB (for gigabytes), TB (for terabytes), PB (for petabytes) and EB (for exabytes). If a suffix is not supplied, MaxSizeSpec is in bytes. If MaxSizeSpec is not specified, then there will be no limit to the amount of space it may use.

    For example, if you want System Restore to use a maximum of 1GB of space for the restore points on drive “C:”, you should type the following:

    vssadmin resize shadowstorage /On=C: /For=C: /Maxsize=1GB

    Vista….Hmmmmm

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