Re: system restore files taking up whole hard drive by Mike
Mike
Wed Aug 20 19:07:09 CDT 2003
A _restore folder occupying 75% of your C drive indicates that system restore
is not working correctly since by default system restore will allocate up to a
maximum 12% of the partition containing the windows folder for the restore
archive or 400MB where the partition is <4GB. It appears that System Restore
is not discarding (FIFOing) older data correctly, possibly because at some
time the system was not immediately rebooted following a state change
(switching SR either off or on).
So, my first suggestion is to reset System Restore:
To reset System Restore:
System | Performance | File System | Troubleshooting and check "Disable System
Restore", Apply and IMMEDIATELY reboot. This will flush you restore folder
and erase all checkpoints, then,
System | Performance | File System | Troubleshooting and uncheck "Disable
System Restore", Apply and again IMMEDIATELY reboot. This should now
automatically create a new checkpoint immediately following the restart.
Finally adjust the space allocated to the restore folder,
System | Performance | File System | Hard Disk and adjust the restore slider
to your preferred setting. A figure of 200MB is normally more than adequate
for day to day use allowing perhaps a week of checkpoints to be available
although increasing this to perhaps 400MB for a few days during periods of
large installs such Microsoft Office is advisable.
If this doesn't clear down the _restore archive (and it doesn't always when
users have experienced similar problems) the next suggestion is to boot to DOS
using a floppy and delete the entire _RESTORE folder structure from there. To
do this, at the DOS prompt, type:
A:\> SMARTDRV
A:\> deltree C:\_RESTORE
After you have deleted the entire _restore folder structure remove the boot
floppy and boot back into Win Me and the _restore folder structure and control
files should be automatically recreated, system restore enabled and a single
new automatic checkpoint created. Remember to go back into the GUI and set the
maximum space you want used for the archive.
--
Mike Maltby MS-MVP
mcmaltby@hotmail.com
Clarity <Clarity@clarity.com> wrote:
> 20 gb hard drive and 15gb has been taken up by system restore files. when
> trying to delete the files, it says...access denied. Need to delete these
> files...how do i do that?
> thanks