System Restore Point Keeps Growing

Hi to all. I posted this question quite a while back and never really got a clear answer as I recall. My SSD is 256GB. It contains the operating system and all of my files. Not even half of the drive is being used. My question is more of interest rather than causing a problem. I set the system restore space usage to 5% which is 11.89GB. If I create a single restore point it starts off using around 600MB. In about a week it will grow to something like 9 or 10GB. It does this on another machine I have as well. I never remember this happening with Windows 7. Once a snapshot is taken I would think that its size would stay pretty much the same. If additional restore points are created I obviously expect it to grow. I'm not concerned about the free space being swallowed up as there is plenty of storage left as I mentioned earlier. Anyone have any idea why this happens? Thanks in advance for any replies.
Mark

Macboatmaster said:

Do you use any third party system maintenance tools especially anything connecting with disk management

Not really. The only maintenance programs I use are Ccleaner and Wise Disk Cleaner. I used them with Windows 7 also and never had this SR growth issue. As far as Ccleaner goes the only System files I have checked to clean are Recycle Bin, Temp Files, Clipboard, Memory Dumps, Ckkdsk File Fragments Windows Log Files and Windows Error Reporting. For Wise Disk Cleaner I have it set to do a scan once a week and the Windows System items checked to clean are IISLog, Windows Update Files, Temp Files created by Windows, Temp Files created by Applications, Memory Dump Files, Error Report Files, Invalid Start Menus, Invalid Scheduled Tasks and Obsolete Windows Installer.

I thought I knew the answer to this, but went searching for background to substantiate my position - and found nothing! Lots of guides on how to use SR, but nothing about how it works 'under the hood'. You will find many references to 'shadow copies', but I didn't find they helped. So here is my belief about how SR works, and why SR points might grow.

When a manual SR point is created, it creates a snapshot of the state of various system files (and folders, of course) at that time - that snapshot does not contain all the contents of the files, but information about them (name, size, date etc). If it did contain the files themselves, it would be enormous. From that point on, SR tracks any changes to those files - to be able to recover from those changes, it has to copy and store the original versions. So necessarily the RP grows over time. When you perform a restore, it re-instates the originals.

However, when a RP is created during, say, a Windows update, it creates the snapshot of the 'before' condition, then captures all the changes - so necessarily ends up being some size that reflects the extent of the changes. This might then grow over time, but being large to start, that growth won't be as noticeable.

Now what I can't understand is, if I am right, why the many posters to various fora with the same question have not received this answer. I may have got it completely wrong. I don't use SR (and haven't for ages), but if this discussion develops, I may turn it on to see what it does. Meanwhile, system images are my preferred backup strategy.

hth, Martin

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PS: I think Windows 7 may have worked differently - it did create a full copy of the 'original' stuff initially, thus taking up a lot of space, but from then on the RP never has to change. Not sure where I got that idea from.

@mngerhold:
I appreciate the time you took to try to figure this issue out. I too really only depend on my Macrium images for backup but do keep SR enabled as an extra measure. I just checked SR and now there is only 1 restore point created by Windows Modular Installer on 5/11. The restore point that I created was deleted because of the space I set for SR of 11.89GB. The SR point is now using 8.46GB which still seems very high.. I will keep an eye on it and post if it continues to grow.
@Macboatmaster:
On my other pc that I mentioned, I don't use either program on it and it is asleep most of the time as I only use it rarely (laptop). It also shows the large growth of SR point(s). In any case I appreciate your response.

@mark: You're welcome!

@Macboatmaster:
Thanks much for the links. I know for sure that if a restore is done by Macrium, there is no SR points left. The next time I do a differential backup with Macrium I will note the size of my SR point before and after the backup. Ill post again when I have this info. Note that if the single restore point reaches the the size of the set limit (11.89GB) the restore point will be deleted unlike the situation mentioned in your 2nd link. If I delete the restore point the size returns to 0.
Thanks again,
Mark