Solved Image your system with free Macrium

[PCG]

With a 'normal' set of programs installed (not games), you should easily stay below 25GB. First thing to do is to get rid of the hiberfile (unless you use hibernation). Next is to reduce the pagefile to 2GB. If you have e.g. 8GB of RAM, that saves you 14GB right there - with 4GB of RAM that would save 6GB.

Thanks for those tips... by reducing my pagefile, I was able to get down to 26.78GB... that's probably going to be my number or the approximate range that I will stay in unless I start uninstalling apps from C: and reinstalling on other drives/partitions. Don't think I'll go there, I'm pretty happy with 27GB.

Disabling hibernation using the powercfg -h off command eliminates the hiberfile, right? I have already done that.

 

[Britton30]

Yup running powercfg -h off removes the hiberfil and if you check the shutdown options, Hibernate is now gone.

 

[whs]

The hiberfile thing is easy to check. If you press Start, hibernation should no more be an option where you have Sleep, Shut down, Restart, etc.

 

[PCG]

whs, I've managed to get down to 23.25GB and that's with all of my apps installed on to C:!

Question: I noticed that after being booted-up and logged on for while, that number actually goes up in to the 25GB range; would those 2 added GB be a result of the pagefile, or is there something else going on in the background that I just don't know about?

Also, in your previous response you suggested changing the pagefile to 2GB, which I did... what do you set the "Initial Size (MB)" to? At first I set both to 2GB, but later read in another article that it's good to set a range, i.e. between 1-2GB; so that's what I ended up doing (see snip). What's your preference on "Initial Size" setting?

Regardless, I believe my system is as optimized as it's gonna get, and I'm ready to start using Macrium on a regular basis.

 

[whs]

1. The additional space usage may be from restore points. Open an elevated Command Prompt and run his command: vssadmin list shadowstorage - then look for the Allocated number. See whether that accounts for the missing space. Watch what the Maximum is. If it is too big for your taste, we'll reduce it.

2. I never set a from-to. Just 2GB in both cases.

3. 23.25GB is probably as good as it gets. Now you have space to run e.g. a virtual machine - I sometimes ran 2 virtual machines (Windows 8 and Ubuntu) with 10GBs left as freespace. Have a look how fast my Windows 8 booted from the virtual partition (this is real time): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAJeKCeXlUU

 

[PCG]

I have my restore points turned-off and plan on using my system image if I ever have a problem; I've got the whole process down to 6-7 minutes for a system restore.

Regarding Allocated Shadow Storage space, what would 2.982GB be considered: high, low or some where in between?

 

[whs]

The current 2.9 allocated is not a problem. But your maximum is high. I would reduce it to 10%. Here is the command:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=10%

 

[PCG]

3. 23.25GB is probably as good as it gets. Now you have space to run e.g. a virtual machine - I sometimes ran 2 virtual machines (Windows 8 and Ubuntu) with 10GBs left as freespace. Have a look how fast my Windows 8 booted from the virtual partition (this is real time): Start Win8 in vBox1.wmv - YouTube

That's a nice video, whs. There seems to be a natural progression here... I went from not really paying attention to any of this stuff to where I'm at now looking in to virtual machines (which I still only have an inkling of understanding) and maybe adding a Windows 8 OS to play around on...

 

[PCG]

The current 2.9 allocated is not a problem. But your maximum is high. I would reduce it to 10%. Here is the command:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=10%

Okay... I'm going to do a little more research before I make that change. I want to have a better understanding of what exactly will be impacted.

 

[PCG]

I'm back... digging in to this a little deeper, I discovered this Shadow Copy Storage information is for my M: drive, not C:

This is a 500GB System Imaging partition on a second internal HDD. I believe (I could be wrong about this), that since I have turned-off System Protection, I do not show any Shadow Copy Storage space for C:

Any way, is there any benefit in keeping this on and at 30% on this second drive? As far as I can tell, there is no impact on my C: drive.

 

[whs]

You are right. I overlooked the 'M' - my bad. But what is the story on C:

Btw: There is really not much you can damage by changing the size of the shadowstorage. Only drawback could be that you lose old restore points - but that is usually not a problem. You can create a new one asap.

 

[PCG]

But what is the story on C:

I believe that's because I have System Protection turned off, but I'm not sure.

 

[whs]

Right, that's probably it. But if I were you I would allow 10% of the space in C for restore points. They are not as reliable as images, but they are sometimes very handy - e.g for retrieving lost files: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/132087-shadowexplorer-recover-lost-files-folders.html.

 

[lehnerus2000]

VM - HDD vs SSD

3. 23.25GB is probably as good as it gets. Now you have space to run e.g. a virtual machine - I sometimes ran 2 virtual machines (Windows 8 and Ubuntu) with 10GBs left as freespace. Have a look how fast my Windows 8 booted from the virtual partition (this is real time): Start Win8 in vBox1.wmv - YouTube

That's a nice video, whs. There seems to be a natural progression here... I went from not really paying attention to any of this stuff to where I'm at now looking in to virtual machines (which I still only have an inkling of understanding) and maybe adding a Windows 8 OS to play around on...

I prefer to run my VMs from a different internal HDD (I don't have a SSD).

On my TAFE course, we often had problems with the VMs "locking up", because they were competing with the OS for HDD access (on the same HDD - the PCs only had one HDD).
It made keeping up with the lecturer's demonstrations extremely difficult.

If you have a single SSD, access "clashes" probably won't be a problem.

But what is the story on C:

I believe that's because I have System Protection turned off, but I'm not sure.

There is a GUI tool to for configuring your System Restore points.

• Press "Win Logo + Pause Break" or open the Start Menu, right click on "Computer" and choose "Properties"
• Click on the "System Protection" link (left side)

You can choose:

• The drives that you want to have System Restore points
• The amount of space allocated for each drive's System Restore points

​

 

[PCG]

Great information above, thank you lehnerus and whs.

Yesterday evening I successfully set-up my computer for dual-booting with Windows 8. However, I quickly realized that it's way too much trouble to shutdown and restart whenever I want to switch between the to operating systems, which is rather frequently. I now understand why some people opt to utilize VMs.

A couple of questions regarding Macrium and VirtualBox:

1. Can I simply image my new Windows 8 partition using Macrium before it's eliminated, and then burn it in to the VM or am I required to do a new Windows 8 installation in to the VM?

2. After the VM is set up, does the C: OS system imaging process normally include the VM guest OS as well, or is it best to complete two separate imaging jobs to keep everything separate?

 

[whs]

1. I don't think that will work. You probably have to reinstall, but I never treid with an image.

2. Yes, when you image the host, it includes the guest

3. I just installed Win8 in VMPlayer. After years of using Virtual Box. But I had a lot of trouble with the network when vBox was installed. Maybe you want to consider VMPlayer. There is a great tutorial by Shawn: VMware Player - Install Windows 8

 

[kado897]

Point 2 is only true if the virtual disk image file is on a partition that you image.

 

[PCG]

Thanks... I was just wrapping up Shawn's tutorial on VirtualBox, but I'll have a look his VMware Player tutorial before making a decision. Are there any significant reasons to choose one over the other?

 

[kado897]

Some people, me included, have problems with video drivers with Windows 8 in VirtualBox.

 

[PCG]

Point 2 is only true if the virtual disk image file is on a partition that you image.

So including the virtual disk image file on the same partition would make life easier when it comes to copying system images, I suppose? That's probably the route I'll take since I have plenty of room on my SSD.