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On my Windows 7 machine I have the maximum usage for System Restore files set to 320 MB (I have a 750 GB drive). Although I have had many automatic and manually created restore points, there are only 11 restore points shown for me to choose from (I did select "Show more restore points") and the oldest is 9 days old. System Restore shows my "Current Usage" as 7.31 MB. I have had my current computer for over 7 months. I have always heard that the system restore point files can be quite large and something does not sound right in my case, showing only 7.31 MB currently being used for these files. It hasn't created a problem to this point as I have not had to roll back my computer but I'm concerned I may not have restore points available to me in the event I need them. I have not manually deleted the System Restore Points. I do use the utility "Advanced System Care" for some maintenance tasks but I don't think this is deleting restore point files. Any ideas? Thanks.
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Answer accepted by question author
Is this perhaps a case of mixing up GBytes with MBytes?
Furthermore, setting the maximum usage to 320 MBytes on a 750 GByte disk is grossly inadequate. On my own system each restore point requires between 70 and 940 MBytes, with most running at 250 MBytes. I suspect you have few if any working restore points. Have you ever tried a System Restore? Highly recommended!
On a 750 GByte disk I would set the limit to 10 GBytes, 30 times more than your current limit.
The Recovery partition is probably the place where the manufacturer placed the files required for a Factory Restore.
My mistake. When I was looking at the "System Protection" tab, under "Available Drives" the default selection was a drive called "RECOVERY" (the icon for it looks like a windows folder). I was selecting and looking at this drive and/or folder instead of looking at Drive C. Once I realized my mistake, I looked at C and saw much more appropriate settings and usage statistics, although based on your recommendation I did increase the limit to over 10 GB. I will do some research on this drive/folder called "RECOVERY" as it's not clear to me what it is or where it came from and to this point, I cannot actually locate it any where. Thanks for your help.
Also I'm assuming there was a typo error (not 320 MB but 3.2GB).
JS
Never be afraid to ask. This forum has some of the best people in the world available to help.
The only time you can expect to see a restore point that is significantly larger in size is when you install or uninstall major applications. A loose rule of thumb is the larger the application's disk space requirements the larger the size of the restore point. Sometimes even smaller apps can create a big restore point if it makes a larger number of registry changes. Also installing a large number of Windows Updates will bump up the size and number restore points.
Normally you can expect to a series of small restore points created by a applcaition or utility software updates to say Adobe Reader, Flash, AV updates, Etc.
JS
Never be afraid to ask. This forum has some of the best people in the world available to help.
