Losing disk space to Shadow Copies

[Gloria C]

While defragging I lost over 100GB on my 1T hard drive to Shadow Copies. When I checked the article “Claiming back your Free Space caused by VSS” I was shocked to discover it gave directions using Windows Vista. How do I recover the files in Windows 10?

[Willy2]

- Run Piriform's CCleaner to recover that (lost) disk space ("Tools" > "System Restore").

- Check the option "Stop VSS when defragmenting NTFS volume" in Defraggler ("Settings" > "Options" > "Advanced").

[Gloria C]

Thank you for your answer. I tried it, but sadly, it didn’t work. To complicate matters my hard drive is in the red. I only have 98GB free. Still need help! Starting to panic.

[hazelnut]

Have you done a RESTART of your machine yet?

[Gloria C]

Several times. I just keep hoping the next time will make a difference. 

[Willy2]

- If you have enabled the "System Restore"  feature then Windows will make such a point every now and then. Even if you didn't install anything (for a long time). This is the most likely the reason why these points keep popping up and keep growing. Although I never figured out what the trigger is for this to occur. And then in combination with some action from DEFRAGGLER seems to trigger this "System Restore Point"feature as well.

(Developers: Are you reading this ???)

 

Here's something that should work:

- Run Antibody's WIZTREE. It shows the size of the folder called "System Volume Information" is. This folder contains the info/data for those System Restore Points. Please give us that size.

- Delete all System Restore Points. There's somewhere deep in Windows 7 itself an option to do that. (Control Panel > system > advanced system options). I assume that a similar option is also available in Window 10.

- If that doesn't work then simply disable this "System Restore Feature" feature all together for all drives and restart. Then those points should be gone

- If you want then re-enable the "System Restore" feature.

- Please report if this was helpful.

[Gloria C]

It Worked!!! Wiztree is a cool little program. My System Files were 57.7% and 449.7 GB. Never knew they even existed. Now I have over half of my hard drive free. You are awesome — thank you! Not sure if I want to turn the restore function back on since I’m always fully backed up.

[hazelnut]

If you make backups of your system already Gloria then you could leave sys restore turned off (kudos to you for having backups  )

[Willy2]

- Install Tweaking's Registry Backup. This program makes a backup of all the registry files upon start up. When you have trouble then you use the same program to restore the registry files. Works much better than System Restore although it only makes a backup of the registry and not of other user data.

- When Windows discovers that the amount of free disk space reaches a certain (very) low level then Windows will automatically (try to) delete one or more of the oldest/older Restore Points.

[Gloria C]

Will do. Thanks again for all your help.