Recommended system restore size windows 7

Jack Wallen shows you how to shrink the maximum size allowed for System Restore so that you can get back space on a hard drive when space is at a premium. I have found myself in the situation too many times where I need to eke out as much space as possible on a Windows 7 machine. Sometimes it's as simple as moving files to an external drive. But sometimes you just need to reclaim as much as possible from the system. One way to find a few extra gigs of space is to take them from Windows 7 System Restore.

The System Restore feature of Windows allows users to, effectively, revert their machine to an earlier state. This is often helpful when a machine goes sideways and the possible cause cannot be found. When that happens, users can return the machine to an earlier state when it was working correctly. This system typically works great, but it can, if improperly configured, take up more and more space on your drive.

I will show you how to shrink the maximum size allowed for system restore so that you can get back space on a drive when space is at a premium. You won't get massive amounts of space returned to your drive, but you might just get enough back to help you and a system out of a jam.

Before you open the configuration window, the correct disk must be selected. Most likely the disk will be C. If, however, you have multiple drives on your system and you store your restore points on an external drive, you will need to select the drive here from the Available Drives listing prior to the next step.

You can actually shrink the size of your restore points from this same window, depending on what you need System Protection to do. Of the three options near the top of the window the first option Restore System Settings and Previous Versions of Files will take up the most space. The second option takes less space but does not save previous system settings. If you do not save system settings in restore points, the restore might not revive a troubled machine.

So I wouldn't suggest selecting either the second or third option. Besides, you are not going to save much space by not saving system settings. This is where you can actually save the most space. By default, System Restore shouldn't be using that much space. But in an emergency, even a few gigs can mean the difference between a system running and not running. There is not adequate disk space for System Restore to complete.

I don't think the file matters, I guess it was just the last file to be unpacked before Restore ran out of space. I checked my primary drive space and it has almost exactly 7gb free. That would seem to be enough space for System Restore to unpack temporary files and whatnot, but I guess not? Does anyone know based on the above info how much more space I might need?

It's a trade-off. Here's the procedure:. To store restore points, you need at least megabytes MB of free space on each disk that is MB or larger. System Restore might use between three and five percent of the space on each disk. As the amount of space fills up with restore points, it deletes older restore points to make room for new ones. System Restore doesn't run on disks smaller than 1 gigabyte GB. Have you attempted to turn off the System Restore on the drives, reboot and then turning back on the System Restore feature?

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