Windows 7: Shadowstorage mystery

whs · 10 Apr 2011

My shadowstorage service uses far more storage than I have allocated as maximum. Does anybody have an explanation for that

Bare Foot Kid · 14 Apr 2011

Hello mate.

I ran into something similar with Vista once, if I remember correctly it had to do with the "needed allocated" space not being large enough for the "maximum" space to be used correctly, does that make any sense?

whs · 14 Apr 2011

Not sure Ted. I had allocated more than 3GBs of shadowstorage. That should suffice for about 5 shadows. On the SSD I did not want to give it too much space. I rely much more on my images anyhow. But sometimes shadows are useful to retrieve a mucked up file.

Anyhow. I resized the shadowstorage with vssadmin and up to now it stays behind the fence. We'll see.

seekermeister · 15 Apr 2011

One other factor that will cause shadow copies to use more space is ghosts of old shadow copies, which can be removed in the Device Manager. I don't know that this has anything to do with it going over maximum or not, but a little routine exorcism will keep a tidier house.

Bare Foot Kid · 15 Apr 2011

Hello Wolfgang

I do remember that 3GB is the exact same size I had issues with and when I changed to 4GB the issues ceased, I believe that 3GB doesn't divide correctly as does 4GB in the way storage/sectors are counted.

At 4GB I get between 12 and 14 points; to me almost 2 weeks of System Restore points is plenty; when it's set to auto-create a point once a day.

Using Method Two in this tutorial.

System Restore Point : Create at System Startup

whs · 15 Apr 2011

Hi Ted, thanks for the additional input. After I have done a resize, the problem seems to be fixed. If it spikes again, I'll apply your suggested method.

Bare Foot Kid · 15 Apr 2011

OK mate, do keep me informed.

Windows 7: Shadowstorage mystery

Shadowstorage mystery problems?