Change capacity using System Restore on Vista

System Restore is a very useful function of Windows Vista, used to restore damaged data on the computer. But there is also a huge limitation. After running for a few weeks, this component will take up a lot of hard drive space. If you use the default settings, System Restore can take up to 15% of the space on the hard disk. For example, if your hard drive has a capacity of 250GB, System Restore will take up 37.5 GB. It is not a small number!

What can we do to limit the total capacity used for System Restore? In Windows XP, this problem is not difficult. On the System Properties window, use the slider to move right or left to increase or decrease the percentage of usage. Unfortunately, this slider has been removed on Windows Vista.

To configure the capacity for System Restore, you need to use a tool called Volume Shadow Copy Administrative , which is the command line tool type (or vssadmin.exe ).

To access vssadmin.exe , you need to open a Command Prompt window with administrative privileges. Do this by: typing ' cmd ' or ' command ' in the Start Menu search field. The first result will be cmd.exe or Command Promp . If the UAC component is open, right-click it and select Run as administrator .

The Command Prompt command window opens. Volume Shadow Copy Service provides several configuration options. Type vssadmin /? then press Enter to see a list of possible options.

If you want to see the amount of space allocated and the largest capacity can be used for System Restore, type vssadmin list shadowstorage and press Enter .

If you want to change the usage space for System Restore, use the following command:

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

MaxSizeSpec (maximum capacity) must be at least 300MB or more, accept units: KB (kilobytes), MB (megabytes), GB (gigabytes), TB (terabytes), PB (petabyte) and EB (exabyte) . If the unit is not selected, the capacity will be set to default to bytes. If the MaxSizeSpec field is not described, the capacity for System Restore will not be limited.

For example, if you want to leave System Restore's maximum capacity of 1GB on the 'C' drive, type the following command:

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

The maximum capacity used for System Restore has been resized.