I've just been looking on my Win XP system with TreeSize Free and find that in System Volume Information I have 18 Restore Points taking up around 12.2 GB of disk space in total. I also find that the size of each individual Restore Point varies from around 71.6 MB right up to 2.5 GB. Is it normal for restore points to vary so greatly in size, when little has changed on the system?
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Yes; Its normal. If very little changed between the restoration points then they wouldn't be a large different so there is more that changed then you think.– RamhoundJul 25, 2014 at 18:19
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I see you can view inside System Volume Information by right clicking and sharing it. Worth noting that so people can reproduce what you are saying– barlopJul 25, 2014 at 23:25
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@Ramhound you may be right. Do you have a source? Since if you are correct then you couldn't delete individual restore points without deleting all the ones after it. I see this link says you can't delete individual restore points techsupportforum.com/forums/f217/… Also, if it was organized like that (and it may well be - can you provide a source ), then I suppose a later restore point would take much longer to restore than an earlier one. As the later one involves all the earlier up to it.– barlopJul 25, 2014 at 23:30
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@barlop - My understanding of restoration points is that when one is created only critical system files are backed up– RamhoundJul 25, 2014 at 23:34
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@Ramhound You write " when one is created only critical system files are backed up" That's not what I asked, and that's incorrect, or at least misleading.While indeed System restore of course doesn't do a full backup of all files(nobody said it does).But for example if you put an exe you like on the desktop,even if nothing to do with Windows,and u go back to a restore point b4 the file was there, System Restore will remove it.(at least in XP), which is a nuisance. It dabbles in folders it deems important and can mess with personal non-critical files there, (possibly) depending on file type– barlopJul 25, 2014 at 23:46
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1 Answer
Windows system restore points are based on NTFS shadow copies. Shadow copies are implemented using a copy-on-write strategy. This means, you have a full hard disk state of a previous date, but only if data is actually written, the previous state of this data is saved and occupies disk space.
So the size of a system restore point essentially scales with the data written after the creation of the system restore point.
While TreeSize is good for reporting on the size of restore points or shadow copies, which are located in the "System Volume Information" folder in the root of the drive, it is advisable not manage and delete them using the Windows Control Panel (applet "System").
