A Few Questions About System Restore

[Fuzzball]

I have a laptop (although I'm sure these questions are universal, so I'm posting here) with Windows 7 and both a SSD C: drive and 750GB HDD D: drive. I noticed recently that the D: drive seemed to be missing about 100GB of space, and I've just found out that this is being taken up by System Restore. Before I adjust anything to free up some space, I have a few questions:

1) How much space should I set aside on each drive for System Restore? Is there a rule that you should use a certain percentage for each drive? (Currently for D: it's 15%, with a potential maximum of 104.8GB being used.) Or should I go no bigger than a particular amount of space? Should the amount I set aside be in the order of MB or GB?

2) My SSD C: drive is where I keep my OS and system files, along with most programs I use, whereas my D: drive is just for storing my saved files and all game programs (i.e. Steam). Should I bother having system protection turned on for the D: drive at all? Is there any benefit I get out of having it a part of System Restore?

3) Is there a way to delete particular restore points? At the moment I can only find a button to delete all of them. I have two system image points in the list of restore points (from when I was first setting up the computer) and I'd like to delete one of them, along with some older restore points. Will these all automatically get deleted anyway if I turn off system protection on drive D:?

4) The two system images I mentioned are actually stored on an external HDD (F: ). Are they also taking up space on my D: anyway? What the hell would happen if I delete the data off my external HDD, but the image points remain on D:?

That's all I can think of right now. No doubt I will think of more questions later.

I hope I've made myself clear and that there are simple answers to all these questions!

 

[ubuysa]

1) How much space should I set aside on each drive for System Restore? Is there a rule that you should use a certain percentage for each drive? (Currently for D: it's 15%, with a potential maximum of 104.8GB being used.) Or should I go no bigger than a particular amount of space? Should the amount I set aside be in the order of MB or GB?

It really depends on how many restore points you want to keep, the more restore points you have the greater your chance of being able to restore your system to a stable version. Personally I set aside no more than 10% of a disk (HDD or SSD) to restore points but if you install/uninstall software often or make frequent changes to your system you might be better advised to increase the space to 20% (again, to give yourself more saved restore points).

2) My SSD C: drive is where I keep my OS and system files, along with most programs I use, whereas my D: drive is just for storing my saved files and all game
programs (i.e. Steam). Should I bother having system protection turned on for the D: drive at all? Is there any benefit I get out of having it a part of System Restore?

Yes. With system restore turned on Windows will save previous versions of files or folders that have been updated since the last restore point. This allows you to "undo" changes you made to user files and folders by restoring a previous version. See http://windows.microsoft.com/is-is/windows/previous-versions-files-faq#1TC=windows-7 for more information on how to restore previous versions of file and folders.

3) Is there a way to delete particular restore points? At the moment I can only find a button to delete all of them. I have two system image points in the list of restore points (from when I was first setting up the computer) and I'd like to delete one of them, along with some older restore points. Will these all automatically get deleted anyway if I turn off system protection on drive D:?

Windows does not allow you to delete individual restore points, only all except the most recent one. There are other tools that can delete individual resote points though. Ccleaner from http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner is a free and very useful tool for cleaning up junk files, but it can also delete individual restore points. There are other stand-alone tools that let you create and delete individual restore points, Google it.

4) The two system images I mentioned are actually stored on an external HDD (F: ). Are they also taking up space on my D: anyway? What the hell would happen if I delete the data off my external HDD, but the image points remain on D:?

System restore point data cannot be used if it's not on the relevant disk, so if the restore point data on your external HDD is copied from either your C: or D: drive by a backup tool it's useless and can be deleted. If however you also have system restore turned on for your external HDD then the restore point data on there relates to previous versions of files and folder data for that specific drive. Generally it's not necessary to have system restore turned on for external drives so you should go into the system restore setup and turn it off for that drive. That should also delete the restore point data on your external drive.

I have a similar setup to you (an SSD as my C: drive and a 750GB HDD as my D: drive). I have system restore turned on only for the C: drive and I have 10% of the disk space allocated. This lets me restore my system should an update or install/uninstall cause problems. I have system restore turned off for my D: drive because I don't need the previous versions facility. If you do have a use for it then leave it turned on.

I hope that answers your questions? Please ask again if you want to know anything else.

 

[Fuzzball]

Thanks very much for the reply! I'm sorry I myself haven't said anything in so long, because I was terribly busy over Christmas and New Year. I still have a few questions though, so I'm reviving this topic! Hopefully people won't ignore it.

a) If I turn off system restore on my D: drive (Which I'm thinking of doing as I don't see why I'd really need it.), will it instantly free up that space for the D: drive to use for other things? If I look in the Computer window, will it change from being about 100GB free to around 200GB? Or is there something else I have to do?

b) Will turning off system protection for my D: drive delete all the current restore points I have, seeing as they exist as backups of the D: drive? Or will I need to delete them to free up that space, like I asked above?

c) Those system images I have on my external hard drive... If I copied them back over onto my computer, could I then use them? Or are they just unusable now because they've been moved off the computer in the first place? I'm thinking I may just delete them anyway, as I doubt I'll ever use them.

d) Slightly different issue... My external HDD seems to also have missing free space, but it doesn't have system protection enabled on it. What could be causing this discrepancy?

 

[ubuysa]

Thanks very much for the reply! I'm sorry I myself haven't said anything in so long, because I was terribly busy over Christmas and New Year. I still have a few questions though, so I'm reviving this topic! Hopefully people won't ignore it.

Hope you had a fun time.

a) If I turn off system restore on my D: drive (Which I'm thinking of doing as I don't see why I'd really need it.), will it instantly free up that space for the D: drive to use for other things? If I look in the Computer window, will it change from being about 100GB free to around 200GB? Or is there something else I have to do?

If you turn off system protection all restore poiints on that drive are deleted. So yes, it will free up space. How much space depends on how many restore points you have and how big they are.

b) Will turning off system protection for my D: drive delete all the current restore points I have, seeing as they exist as backups of the D: drive? Or will I need to delete them to free up that space, like I asked above?

Turning off system restore deletes all restore points. There is nothing else you need to do to recover this space.

c) Those system images I have on my external hard drive... If I copied them back over onto my computer, could I then use them? Or are they just unusable now because they've been moved off the computer in the first place? I'm thinking I may just delete them anyway, as I doubt I'll ever use them.

I don't know for certain but I'm pretty sure they will be unusable. I think Windoes remembers the actual location on the drive of restore points so copying them off and back doesn't work.

d) Slightly different issue... My external HDD seems to also have missing free space, but it doesn't have system protection enabled on it. What could be causing this discrepancy?

Fragmented free space. When files are written to a disk they are not all added one after another, they are placed wherever there is room. So over time the free space become fragmented. I think Windows reports only the size of the largest free space fragment, it doesn't add up all the space in the many fragments. The WIndows defrag tool can't fix this because it doesn't defrag free space, to do that consider Ultimate Defrag (http://disktrix.com/). It's not free but it's not expensive either and it allows you to place files where you want and defrag the free space. Highly recommended.

 

[Fuzzball]

Well I turned off system protection for the D: drive, and now the amount of space it's used and the amount free it has left adds up properly. So that's good! The external HDD is still a mystery though.