Thursday, May 7, 2009

Use VSSAdmin to manage System Restore size

In order to manage the Volume Shadow Copy Service and ultimately System Restore, you’ll use the VSSAdmin command-line tool — there is no GUI tool in Vista for configuring System Restore. In order to run VSSAdmin, you must launch an elevated Command Prompt window.

To begin, right-click on the Command Prompt shortcut and select the Run as Administrator command. When you encounter the UAC, you will need to respond appropriately.

You can now use the VSSAdmin command-line tool to investigate and configure System Restore and the Shadow Copy Service. For example, you can obtain a list of all the restore points currently saved on the system by using the command:
vssadmin list shadows

You can see how much disk space is allocated to and used by System Restore and the Shadow Copy Service system by using the command:
vssadmin list shadowstorage

You can reset the value of the Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space setting using the command:
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for= /on= [/maxsize=

On my problem system, I reset the Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space setting to 15GB using the command:
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=c: /on=c: /maxsize=15GB

Once the operation was complete, restart the system.

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