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harddisk depletion revisited - system volume information
Advaitadas - Sat, 25 Jun 2005 18:15:15 +0530
I am losing diskspace at the alarming rate of 200 mb a day. Even buying myself a 160 GB harddisk wouldnt help depletion for a very long time. I wonder what is wrong. I found this folder here on the harddisk, called 'System volume information', which has a hidden subfolder called 'restore'. It contains 1 GB out of a total 10 GB harddisk space. Is the contents of this folder perhaps disposable?
Attachment:
Lancer - Sat, 25 Jun 2005 22:19:00 +0530
QUOTE(Advaitadas @ Jun 25 2005, 05:45 AM)
I am losing diskspace at the alarming rate of 200 mb a day. Even buying myself a 160 GB harddisk wouldnt help depletion for a very long time. I wonder what is wrong. I found this folder here on the harddisk, called 'System volume information', which has a hidden subfolder called 'restore'. It contains 1 GB out of a total 10 GB harddisk space. Is the contents of this folder perhaps disposable?
Not according to this
link.
Dandavats,
Lancer
Madhava - Sat, 25 Jun 2005 22:30:47 +0530
What you have in there are the "System Restore Points". Whenever you add or remove drivers and so forth, a backup of the registry and important system files is made.
Right click C: => General - Disk Cleanup / More options / System Restore => Clean Up.
To define how much is allocated for system restore: My Computer > System Restore > C: / Settings.
Advaitadas - Sat, 25 Jun 2005 22:37:31 +0530
I am silent in awe - a full GB of diskspace was recovered in this way! Thanks. Could I safely try the other two options there too - Windows Components and Installed Programs?
Madhava - Sat, 25 Jun 2005 23:05:26 +0530
Well, those two will only allow you to uninstall programs you have installed, along with Windows components such as MineSweeper.
Advaitadas - Sat, 25 Jun 2005 23:15:08 +0530
Never tried mine sweeper, but who knows in the future? I'll keep it just in case.....
So how often should / could I clean up this System Restore folder?
Madhava - Sat, 25 Jun 2005 23:56:11 +0530
The smartest thing to do is to just limit the amount of space allocated for the System Restore feature in the way I described above. Set it to whatever you're comfortable with, say - 200 or 300 MB. Whenever it gets filled up, the oldest restore points are automatically purged.
Advaitadas - Sun, 26 Jun 2005 00:28:25 +0530
There was a box there "Turn Off System Restore on all drives". I didnt tick that box when I was setting it to 200 mb. Is that OK?
Madhava - Sun, 26 Jun 2005 00:43:32 +0530
You can also turn it off for all drives. However, in that case you won't be able to use the System Restore feature if some system files on your PC become corrupt and mess up Windows. You don't need to turn it off.