Windows Tools, Help & Guides

System restore can quickly swallow up a large portion of your hard drive.

System restore in Windows 7 is more customisable than before.  You can specify how much space is taken by system restore, and how it backs you up.

This guide will walk you through the custom options and show you how to change & limit system restore (yes i am fed up of writing system restore!)

Method 1

Step 1.

Click the Start Orb, right click Computer and select Properties.

Step 2.

In the left hand pane click on System Protection

Step 3.

Under this tab you can start system restore, create a new restore point, and configure the protection settings on all of your drives.

Select the drive you want to change and click Configure.

Step 4.

Under Restore Settings we can specify how system restore backs us up.  I recommend leaving the Restore Settings as they are.

Under Disk Space Usage you can see how much space is already allocated for system restore and how much is actually being used.  Drag the slider to the amount you’re willing to give away (recommended: 5-8% of your hard drive) and hit Apply.

You can also delete all of the restore points, although not recommended.  Read the warning notice carefully.

Method 2.

For all of you geeks out there.  There is a command to resize the allowed space for system restore.

Open an elevated command prompt and type;

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /On=X: /For=X: /Maxsize=ZGB

Where X is the drive you want to change and Z is the number of Gigabytes.

It will reflect in the System Protection configuration window immediately.

Type vssadmin in the command prompt for more information.