Windows Vista and low disk space

Posted Monday, February 18, 2008 7:23 PM by Maurice

One thing I noticed right away when I installed Windows Vista is that it takes up lot of disk space. Sure I installed the Ultimate edition so I wasn't expecting a very slim install but still it used a lot more disk space than I expected. My setup is a 50 Gb C drive for Windows Vista and program files while leaving a 140 Gb D drive for data. That may seem a lot but as I develop using VMware I use up quite a bit of it with 4 virtual machines. Anyway the practice of using a virtual machine for all software development is something I can recommend!

Anyway back to the disk space usage. When I started I was surprised but everything went well. But the C drive kept on filling up even though I wasn't installing new software and I kept the temp directory in check. Yesterday the bar the Explorer indicating how full the disk was even turned red so some action was needed. I fired up WinDirStat, a great utility for finding where your disk space went and reported 14Gb as <Unkown>. That is quite a portion of a 50 Gb disk, a whoping 28%, so I decided to focus on that first. It turns out it was in use by Windows Vista System Restore.

How to check? Well you need to start an command prompt with administrator privileges and from there do "vssadmin list shadowstorage" which will tell you how much disk space is in use by System Restore and what the maximum was. Turns out my machine didn't have a maximum so it just kept on growing; no wonder that I was running low in disk space Sad.

Fixing the problem is also done using vssadmin with the "Resize ShadowStorage" option. I did and now I can keep working just fine again Smile.

More info on vssadmin can be found here although Windows Vista doesn't seem to understand all listed options.

Enjoy your disk space!

Comments

# re: Windows Vista and low disk space

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 5:18 AM by Geert Verhoeven

I had the same problem. Microsoft should add a max value by default. Especially on laptops with limited disk space this can be painfull.

geertverhoeven.blogspot.com/.../how-windows-vista-fills-your-disk.html

# re: Windows Vista and low disk space

Wednesday, February 20, 2008 10:28 AM by Ben Cutter

not able to down load any updates on my vista program

# re: Windows Vista and low disk space

Friday, March 28, 2008 2:11 PM by Niki Liu

Lifesaver, thank you so much!

# re: Windows Vista and low disk space

Wednesday, April 30, 2008 2:13 AM by Sasha

Thank you so much man. I was getting mad with this problem. Thank you very much for sharing these informations.

# re: Windows Vista and low disk space

Wednesday, May 07, 2008 8:25 AM by Raven

Hello and thanks for sharing this info. I supposed you meant run command prompt as Administrator? I did that and typed "vssadmin list shadowstorage" in there. However, according to my actions, the Command promt stated that what I typed is not recognised as an internal, external command and an operable command and batch files. So I guess I didn't understand your solution. Could you provide more specific details on the solution to this low disk space problem?

Many thanks

# re: Windows Vista and low disk space

Wednesday, May 07, 2008 12:10 PM by Maurice

@Raven,

You are correct and you need to run a command prompt as an administrator. Your command seems ok so I am not sure what the problem is. Maybe the search path or else vssadmin is not installed by default on every Vista installation. I am using Vista Ultimate 64bits and it works with the default path settings.

# re: Windows Vista and low disk space

Friday, May 09, 2008 3:42 AM by Raven

Thanks for sharing Maurice.

So now what should I do?

I'm kind of at my wit's end.

Oh by the way, I tried shifting some files from the C drive, under the default folder, "User" and in the end I wasn't able to do that because most of the things there are admin stuffs I guess.

Help!

# re: Windows Vista and low disk space

Friday, May 09, 2008 3:49 AM by Raven

Hello again. I typed in again and this time it worked. Great!

So now  I'm actually wondering what these shadow terms mean and so..

whats Shadow Copy storage space?

whats Shadow copies?

I need additional help!

# re: Windows Vista and low disk space

Friday, May 09, 2008 6:06 AM by Maurice

The disk spaces is used for backup copies of files that are changed. If you right click a file you will see an option to search for previous versions of the file. These previous versions are stored in the shadow copy storage.

# re: Windows Vista and low disk space

Friday, June 20, 2008 10:40 AM by sam

i am having the same problem but when i am using the vssadmin command as administrator it is saying that no items can be found that satisfy the query.....

any help will be appreciated...

thanks

# re: Windows Vista and low disk space

Monday, July 21, 2008 9:49 AM by Joy

I am having the same problem of low disk space. I have tried to use the vssadmin and resized the shadow storage but still I am having issues with my disk space. Any help Please

# re: Windows Vista and low disk space

Monday, July 21, 2008 9:56 AM by Maurice

Try using WinDirStat and seeing where all the space is going.

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