System restore file size balloons to 2+ GB

[Grinch80]

Hi all, new member here. Upgraded from XP a week ago and now playing with 7 for the first time. I pulled the trigger completely so no going back. So far, I really like it, but need to get more comfortable with it.

Problem is my system restore points are ballooning and squeezing out old restore points. Example: I had roughly 10 points after manually creating each one when I was doing my initial software installs. A day later, I looked and they were all gone except for 1 point which had ballooned to fit my entire allocation (2 or 3%) at the time. So this 1 point killed all my previous 9 points. And I can't understand how this happened.

So I upped system restore to 7%/10GB to test what's going on, and now I'm consistently seeing 2GB sized restore points vs. a couple hundred megs which is what I expect.

The thing I can't abide is my restore points getting squeezed out for new ones. Maybe 1 or 2, but not all of them for a single massive one that's auto generated by the system.

Any ideas on what's going on? Thanks.

EDIT: I've just confirmed that my system restore function is actually fluid...the restore points grow. I turned off restore, deleted all points, and rebooted. Then I manually created a single, new point as a baseline. It started out as 50 MB. And continues to grow, even as I check mail or open up my browser. Now that same single restore point is 94 MB.

So I can understand why I developed huge restore points, especially as I was playing around with 7, installing things, etc. The problem continues to be that a) the individual restore point files can grow to be huge (2+ GB), and b) the huge files push out old restore points.

I'm curious if this is by design or an actual flaw. I don't want my restore points to grow or be fluid. I want them to be a snapshot in time that I can revert back to in case I mess things up. Gold star to anyone that can turn the "fluidity" off. Thanks.

 

[logicearth]

What you are seeing sounds like Previous Versions is what is causing the size to increase. Previous Versions is what System Restore is to system files but for all files. Every change that is made to a file is recorded and saved. I do not know of a way to turn off Previous Versions and keep System Restore.

This link here has a good overview:
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/shadow.html

 

[Disk4mat]

Have you opened system restore to see how many restore points are available? I have more restore points available than actual files.

Do you use any file sharing applications?

Here is another page for reference: http://www.blogsdna.com/2039/exploring-windows-7-system-restore-restore-previous-versions.htm

 

[Grinch80]

I do not know of a way to turn off Previous Versions and keep System Restore.

Thanks all for the explanations, makes sense. I didn't know of the Previous Versions functionality.

I do wish there was a way to keep Sys Restore and disable Previous Versions so that my restore points are static and predictable. I'll continue to investigate.

 

[GabRieL]

Hi all, new member here. Upgraded from XP a week ago and now playing with 7 for the first time. I pulled the trigger completely so no going back. So far, I really like it, but need to get more comfortable with it.

Problem is my system restore points are ballooning and squeezing out old restore points. Example: I had roughly 10 points after manually creating each one when I was doing my initial software installs. A day later, I looked and they were all gone except for 1 point which had ballooned to fit my entire allocation (2 or 3%) at the time. So this 1 point killed all my previous 9 points. And I can't understand how this happened.

So I upped system restore to 7%/10GB to test what's going on, and now I'm consistently seeing 2GB sized restore points vs. a couple hundred megs which is what I expect.

The thing I can't abide is my restore points getting squeezed out for new ones. Maybe 1 or 2, but not all of them for a single massive one that's auto generated by the system.

Any ideas on what's going on? Thanks.

EDIT: I've just confirmed that my system restore function is actually fluid...the restore points grow. I turned off restore, deleted all points, and rebooted. Then I manually created a single, new point as a baseline. It started out as 50 MB. And continues to grow, even as I check mail or open up my browser. Now that same single restore point is 94 MB.

So I can understand why I developed huge restore points, especially as I was playing around with 7, installing things, etc. The problem continues to be that a) the individual restore point files can grow to be huge (2+ GB), and b) the huge files push out old restore points.

I'm curious if this is by design or an actual flaw. I don't want my restore points to grow or be fluid. I want them to be a snapshot in time that I can revert back to in case I mess things up. Gold star to anyone that can turn the "fluidity" off. Thanks.

Yea i just noticed that today that one restore point will grow in size. I don't really like that idea but o well, its microsofts call, can't wait for windows 7 sp1 to come out theirs still alot of bugs to be worked out!

 

[RWP59]

Thanks logicearth for the insight. I too was unaware of the "Previous Versions" feature. This would explain my predicament as I've been editing a lot of 1Gb and 2GB video files lately. If system restore is trying to save a backup copy every time I edit one of those files, then I've probably been adding 10GB per day to my latest restore point and would need to allocate 50GB to 100Gb of disk space to system restore to get it to keep a few weeks worth of restore points. Until Microsoft provides an option to turn off previous versions (which is actually a good feature and would be even better if you could turn it on or off for individual folders or libraries) or someone comes out with a hack to do that, I'll have to ignore system restore and rely on Acronis instead.

 

[boredwithwin7]

Hi There!

Any luck?

I too would want that previous versions of files to be disabled. it works at random and never works for me anyway. But I would like to keep restore point functionality. Any clues on how to?