Vista – system restore preferences

In Windows XP you could set the amount of disk space you wanted the system restore to use.  In Vista it auto Magically tries to set it for you and does not give you an easy way to change it.  I found that they now call this shadowstorage.  To adjust this you have to use the gold old CMD prompt (DOS)  Below are instructions for changing the system restore size to 1.5 gig from the 11 it auto-magically set.   I do frequent backups (MOZY.com) so I am too worried if my box cannot have 2-4 restore points.  I want my disk space.  Specially since Vista takes up close to 20 gig. 

To view your current shadowstorage settings use the following command (you must first open a command prompt with administrative rights – START | ALLPROGRAMS | ACCESSSORIES | Command Prompt (right click and “run as administrator))

vssadmin list shadowstorage  (this shows the current size)

vssadmin list shadows (this shows how many restore points are currently held inthe above space)

The following will adjust the size of your shadowstorage to 1.5 gig

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /On=C: /For=C: /Maxsize=1.5GB

This should help free up some needed space.  HAPPY Vista’ing

 

8 thoughts on “Vista – system restore preferences”

  1. I tried, but it is telling me that vssadmin is not recognized as anything. Not a batch file, a program, a command, nada.

    Mike

  2. I love you, i had 852GB Of space left, now i did that, and i have 892 :D.

    THANK YOU SO MUCH

  3. Thanks a heap!

    Vista was using 69.8GB of my HDD for Restore Points!

    WTF!

    Tis no more! 😀

  4. I get ‘The specified volume shadow copy storage association is not found.’. HAAAAAAALLLLLPPPP

  5. I have found that both spacing and capitalization can cause issues. The other method is to use the gui. Is this Vista?

  6. Hi Jim, I just wanted to say a big thank you for your help! My hard drive space had an 87gb fluctuation because of the restore point space allocated by Vista. Thanks to the guide above I found out that 76gb of it had already been used – all sorted now and reduced to 1.5gb! Cheers mate, you’re a star!

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