System restore - weird behavior

I seem to be running into some odd behavior with system restore. I wanted to delete my old restore points and create a new one. So under system restore>configure, I selected delete. The "current usage" dropped to 0 GB. But when I closed it and went back in to restore>configure, it still showed "current usage" of 7+GB. I then selected "disable system protection" to be sure it deletes my restore points. Again, the "current usage" dropped to 0. But when I selected "Turn on system protection" it immediately said "current usage" was back to 7+GB - before I created a new restore point!

So what's going on here? If I open ccleaner and go to tools to delete restore points (I don't do that in ccleaner but I went in just to see what it said), it shows no restore points exist currently. Yet under system restore>configure, windows is telling me 7+GB is being used. I've also restarted the PC and went through it all again with the same results. If I delete the restore points, or disable system protection, shouldn't "current usage" drop to 0 and stay there until I create a new restore point? That's how it's always been before. Am I missing something?

For now I just made a new restore point, And it still shows 7+GB. I also typed "vssadmin list shadows" into an elevated command prompt and it listed only 1 shadow copy - the one I just made. So, it seems it's deleting the old restore points, but it's not reporting the usage correctly. And it doesn't seem that I'm gaining any space back after I delete the old restore points. So I'm wondering what's going on here.

I found it easy to clean System Restore points through the Disk Cleanup. Go to the option to Clean up system files, and then Clean up for System Restore and Shadow Copies on the More Options tab.

Before deletion:

current usage: 8.62 GB
free space: 35.2 GB
"vssadmin list shadows"
1 shadow copy found
"vssadmin delete shadows /For=C: /all"
1 shadow copy deleted

After deletion:

current usage: 8.62 GB
free space: 35.2 GB
"vssadmin list shadows"
0 shadow copies found

Clearly there's something wrong. I just ran this a minute ago. I currently have no shadow copies according to system restore, ccleaner, and "vssadmin list shadows". Yet it still shows current usage: 8.62 GB and my free space has not gone down. What is going on here?

Right now, system restore is disabled. It lists OFF. "Disable system protection" is ticked. Yet it still says current usage: 8.62 GB!

Shot in the dark, but when it's on is the recovery drive "on" (if you have one)? Maybe that's what is taking up the space, and not the actual OS drive.

Bobby Phoenix said:

Shot in the dark, but when it's on is the recovery drive "on" (if you have one)? Maybe that's what is taking up the space, and not the actual OS drive.

I'm not sure what you mean by recovery drive, but the system restore is just on for C drive, not the other drives.

This just happened fairly recently I think. I don't recall this ever happening before on this PC. I have no idea what would have caused this though.

TairikuOkami said:

Try to set the size to 320MB, that is the minimum.

vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /Maxsize=320MB

I'll give that a shot later this evening or tomorrow and report back. I've tried setting it to 0 with the standard slider and that did nothing, but I'll try it with this command and see what happens.

rivre said:

I'm not sure what you mean by recovery drive, but the system restore is just on for C drive, not the other drives.

This just happened fairly recently I think. I don't recall this ever happening before on this PC. I have no idea what would have caused this though.

That's what I meant. When on you have the main C drive, and then other drives. I thought maybe another drive was taking up the space.