Solved How much disk space is needed for System Restore?

[2harts4ever]

Hi,

After running WinXP for almost 7 years I took the plunge last week and bought a new computer with Win 7 Home Premium. Today I upgraded it to Win 7 Professional.

Now my computer specs are:
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]HP p7-1157c AMD A6-3600 APU w/Radeon ™ HD Graphics 2.10GHz[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]8 Gbs of Memory[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]64-bit running Windows 7 Pro w/Internet Explorer 9.[/FONT]

Today while still exploring the features of Win 7 I noticed all my previous Restore Points except for two that were created today were gone. It seems all the ones created before my last reboot had been deleted.

I think I found out why after checking the Restore configuration settings for the drive.

Only 1 % of the 919 GB drive was being allotted for Restore Points. So I changed that to 20 % for the time being.

Now I am trying to find out how much space should I actually set aside for restore points for the size of my hard drive?

Thanks and regards,

2harts4ever

 

[JimLewandowski]

I have 5G physically allocated and have about 20 restore points.

 

[whs]

20% of that big drive is too much. Anything between 10 and 20GB would be ample. Restore points take up to 1GB per shot, but they can be smaller depending what you have on C:

Also I suggest to put your user data on a seperate partition and give that 5GB for the restore points. Is handy if you lost a file and want to retrieve it. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/132087-shadowexplorer-recover-lost-files-folders.html

 

[2harts4ever]

Jim and whs,

I appreciate both your responses. I think I will try giving 10 % for Restore Points and see how that goes.

The suggestion of putting my user data on a seperate partition and give that 5GB for the restore points makes sense but unfortunately that is a little more than my 69-year-old 'brain housing group' can understand right now ...lol

However, I will try to check out how to make a partition.

Thanks and regards,

2harts4ever

 

[whs]

Heh, come on you youngster. I am 74 and find it to be easy - lol. Made a little tutorial which might help: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/72427-data-partition.html

And here is a thread where I explained an even easier method 5 minutes ago - post #24 http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/202103-i-need-some-reassuring-ssds-3.html#post1696816

PS: Here is another easy one just on the partition creation: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2674-partition-volume-create-new.html

 

[2harts4ever]

whs,

I will check out your links 'old-timer' ...lol

Thanks and regards,

2harts4ever

 

[kado897]

20% of that big drive is too much. Anything between 10 and 20GB would be ample. Restore points take up to 1GB per shot, but they can be smaller depending what you have on C:

Also I suggest to put your user data on a seperate partition and give that 5GB for the restore points. Is handy if you lost a file and want to retrieve it. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/132087-shadowexplorer-recover-lost-files-folders.html

Shadow explorer is good but you don't need it. Just use Windows built in previous versions which can be found in the properties dialogue..

 

[seavixen32]

Partition Wizard is highly recommended if you want to partition your hard drive - having a separate data partition makes sense if you want to protect and backup your personal data.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/93322-partition-wizard-use-bootable-cd.html

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Now I am trying to find out how much space should I actually set aside for restore points for the size of my hard drive?

Set it fairly "high" and then monitor it for a few weeks. Then maybe readjust it to a lower number.

I like to have 2 or 3 weeks worth of Restore Points.

I currently have a maximum of 7.45 GB allotted and 7.06 GB used. That currently gives me 11 restore points dating back to November 21, exactly 3 weeks.

Some say to make it larger, so you have restore points dating back several months. To each his own, but I have never found myself in a situation where I wanted to restore to 60 or 90 days ago--I very rarely need a restore point more than a week old. And I use it regularly--at least once a month on average.

 

[2harts4ever]

Good morning ignatzatsonic, seavixen32 and kado897,

I appreciate you all taking the time to respond.

@kado897: could you explain what you mean when you said: Just use Windows built in previous versions which can be found in the properties dialogue..

@ignatzatsonic: how large is your drive?

Thanks and regards,

2harts4ever

 

[ignatzatsonic]

@ignatzatsonic:how large is your drive?

My C drive is 80 GB.

Of that, 30 GB is occupied.

My data is elsewhere, on D.

 

[2harts4ever]

Thank you for the added information.

 

[kado897]

I have most of my data on an external drive M: and have turned on system protection for that drive. I have also set up a scheduled task to make sure I have at least one RP per day.



If you right click on a folder or file and open properties. On the Previous versions tab you get a list of dates for which previous versions exist.



If you open one of these for a folder it opens in explorer from where you can access and copy any file you chose or the complete folder if you wish. It gives the state of that folder when the RP was taken.

 

[2harts4ever]

kado897,

Thanks for the explanation. While on the subject of System Restore am I correct in my understanding that unless you use Task Scheduler a Restore Point will only be created every 7 days by Windows?

Thanks and regards,

2harts4ever

 

[kado897]

Yes Windows will ensure that yoiu have at least one restore point per week. As I said I use the task shcheduler to create one each day using the VBS files from this tutorial. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/494-system-restore-point-shortcut.html

 

[ignatzatsonic]

kado897,

Thanks for the explanation. While on the subject of System Restore am I correct in my understanding that unless you use Task Scheduler a Restore Point will only be created every 7 days by Windows?

Thanks and regards,

2harts4ever

I think I have read that is true, but..........restore points are also made during Windows Updates and can also be made manually at will.

Looking over my list of restore points, most were made automatically when I did a Windows Update of some type--or manually. None appear to have been made by the one-per-week automatic process.

 

[kado897]

It actually checks daily but only creates one if there have not been any in the last week. I have had it happen only the once that I am aware of and that was when I had done an image restore (which removes RPs) just before the check was due to run.

 

[2harts4ever]

Everyone,

So much information ... so much to absorb ...lol

Seriously I appreciate all the comments and suggestions.

Thanks and regards,

2harts4ever

 

[kado897]

You are welcome 2harts4ever. You will get lots of good advice here.

 

[2harts4ever]

Just by searching this forum it is making the switch from XP to 7 a lot easier. Glad I found it!