Windows Vista and low disk space

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!

Published 18 February 2008 07:23 PM by Maurice

Comments

# Geert Verhoeven said on 19 February, 2008 05:18 AM

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

# Ben Cutter said on 20 February, 2008 10:28 AM

not able to down load any updates on my vista program

# Niki Liu said on 28 March, 2008 02:11 PM

Lifesaver, thank you so much!

# Sasha said on 30 April, 2008 02:13 AM

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

# Raven said on 07 May, 2008 08:25 AM

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

# Maurice said on 07 May, 2008 12:10 PM

@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.

# Raven said on 09 May, 2008 03:42 AM

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!

# Raven said on 09 May, 2008 03:49 AM

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!

# Maurice said on 09 May, 2008 06:06 AM

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.

# sam said on 20 June, 2008 10:40 AM

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

# Joy said on 21 July, 2008 09:49 AM

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

# Maurice said on 21 July, 2008 09:56 AM

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

# low disk space why said on 01 August, 2008 01:06 PM

Pingback from  low disk space why

# vijay said on 16 August, 2008 03:03 AM

i am having the same problem but when i am using the vssadmin list shadowstorage command as administrator it is saying that you dont have the correct permission to run this command.Please run this utility from a command window that has elevated administrator privileges

# Maurice said on 16 August, 2008 03:08 AM

Right click on the command prompt in the start menu and select "run as administrator". that will give you an elevated command prompt that will allow you to do admin actions.

# SladeofDark said on 23 August, 2008 11:38 PM

WOW!! great tip man big ups to you for that one. That directory tool is something ive needed for ages. I am running Server 2008, it is great BTW, but i was using a program that was not running properly.. the server never shuts down so the error logs had filled up my hardrive to max. it would have taken me a while to find what was killing the space. thanks again!!

# Andrew Ferguson dot NET » My Hatred for Unbounded Volume Shadow Copies said on 09 October, 2008 01:15 AM

Pingback from  Andrew Ferguson dot NET  » My Hatred for Unbounded Volume Shadow Copies

# Chipz said on 26 October, 2008 04:15 AM

Thank you very much for your help, amazing tips, i was also getting irritated by the lack of space on my system drive.

# Weez said on 19 November, 2008 09:25 PM

please advise on how to enter the command correctly for resizing shadow storage. i am having problems. i have tried a number of ways and keep getting invalid code

# Rene said on 29 November, 2008 11:22 PM

I used windirstat to check my hdd and i found 23.8GB as <unknown> However I check the system restore storage space to be about 15.9GB only. Could anyone advise on where does the remaining 8Gb comes from? Really appreciate it. Thank you

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