Disappearing Disk Space on Win7?

Nefaro · April 26, 2015, 06:43:05 AM

I recently noticed many gigabytes worth of space fluctuating back & forth on both my notebook and desktop PCs (both of which use Win7-64).

The available hard drive space on my system drive would just continually drop and uninstalling some stuff only helped for a short time until the space was gone again, despite having added nothing myself.

So I eventually got around to digging around. Turns out that the System Restore Disk usage was set to 50% by default! On both! Dubya Tee Fucking Eff?!

After lowering it down to 3%, I got back a huge amount of disk space that was being used by that ridiculous nonsense. I'm talking 400+GB on my desktop's C: drive. Seems like some Microsoft update screwed the setting quite awhile back. It's not the first time.

Anyway..

If you want to check how much of your hard drive space is being reserved for system restore points:

Rt-click "My Computer" and select Properties.
Click System Protection on the left
Select your System Drive (usually C:) and click the Configure button below
Adjust the "Max Usage" slider below, if needed.

I've never had much luck using System Restore on any OS problems, and I've turned it completely off in the past. However, I've left it running in later years in the hopes that any buggy Windows update or Service Pack can be reversed if it proves to be a problem afterward. So I still keep a it going to some small extent.

Gusington · April 26, 2015, 02:27:19 PM

Thanks Nef, I will check my machine when I get the chance.

Greybriar · April 26, 2015, 02:45:17 PM

Mine is set to 1% and is taking up 349 MB of space on a 1.5 TB hard drive. I can live with that.

But thanks for the heads-up, Nefaro.

bob48 · April 26, 2015, 03:31:50 PM

^Just checked mine, and its the same as Greybriar; 1% on 1.5 Tb. Worth knowing though. Thanks Nef.

steve58 · April 26, 2015, 03:38:18 PM

Quote from: bob48 on April 26, 2015, 03:31:50 PM
^Just checked mine, and its the same as Greybriar; 1% on 1.5 Tb. Worth knowing though. Thanks Nef.

And mine was set to 1% as well. I'm running Win 7 Pro 64-bit.

Nefaro · April 26, 2015, 05:11:17 PM

Makes me wonder WTH happened to make all mine set to 50% by default. It wasn't like that originally.

After doing some searching, it looks to have happened to others before too.

Gusington · April 26, 2015, 05:21:49 PM

Invisible face-eating demons?

Silent Disapproval Robot · April 26, 2015, 06:39:54 PM

Quote from: Nefaro on April 26, 2015, 05:11:17 PM
Makes me wonder WTH happened to make all mine set to 50% by default. It wasn't like that originally.

After doing some searching, it looks to have happened to others before too.

Mine had done the same. Bloody annoying when you only have a 256GB SSD.

bbmike · April 26, 2015, 06:46:56 PM

Mine was set to off but I suspect the SSD software I have made it that way.

Gusington · April 26, 2015, 07:25:57 PM

Mine was also set @ 1%...

Shelldrake · April 27, 2015, 12:31:52 PM

Checked my office machine and it was also at 50%, which I changed to 10%. Thanks Nef.

Nefaro · April 27, 2015, 03:42:49 PM

Quote from: Shelldrake on April 27, 2015, 12:31:52 PM
Checked my office machine and it was also at 50%, which I changed to 10%. Thanks Nef.

O0

I figured that if my machines had been screwed up this way, someone else's probably was.

Martok · April 28, 2015, 01:58:40 PM

Mines set to 2% (which is fine), but I'm still glad for the heads-up. Thanks Nefaro!

Nefaro · July 16, 2015, 05:16:04 PM

Update to this:

The problem was with a newer feature in Avast! Anti-virus.

It uses a Virtual Machine environment to run some stuff and, evidently, keeps pushing up the allotted system restore space available to Windows in the process.. using a large chunk of your HDD space.

My System Restore space was still moving back up to 20% of my total hard drive space, so I finally got motivated to do a better search.

The fix is easy:

1) Go to Control Panel > Programs & Features
2) Select Avast in the list and click the "Change" button at the top (not uninstall).
3) An Avast intro window will pop-up, click "Continue" if needed
4) Uncheck the "Virtual Machine .." option (in center row on current version). It also has a tooltip that says it's an "NG" feature, if you're unsure of which one it is.

Optional: While you're there, you can also uncheck the box for the "Grimefighter" feature if you want. That's the one which will pop up an occasional message about background stuff that may be slowing down your computer. I don't need it so it's gone too.

After saving your changes, you will be prompted to restart the computer in that Avast window. Do so. Then you will want to check your System Restore allotment again and lower the percentage as mentioned earlier in this thread.